Painted Windows / Studies in Religious Personality

minds, it would harden instead of softening their hearts. Indeed, the effort "thus to go beyond themselves, and wind themselves too

perhaps misses his considerable abilities and his singular attraction. His worst enemy is his frogged coat. Atten

esque father and his wonderful mother were the humanity of that movement, but their son was its first impulse of spiritual fanaticism. The father was the dr

ission, drove the Reverend William Booth, an ex-Methodist minister preaching repentance in the slums, to fling restraint of every kind to the wind

l, who was rather fond of meeting dignitaries. But Mr. Bramwell Booth would hear of no concession which weakened the Army's authority in the slums, and which would also eventually weaken its authority in the world. He refused to acknowledge any service or rite of the Church as essential to the salvation of men. If the

old and minds which are hard. It does not easily make its home in benevolent and philanthropic natures, certainly never in purely sentimental natures. I think its opening is made not by love but by hatred. A man may love God with all his

ness, a bluff, laughing, rallying, chafing, and tolerant good fellow, overflowing with the milk of human kindness, oozing with the honey of social sweetness. At the next moment, however, the voice sinks suddenly to the key of what Father Knox, I am afraid, would call uncti

apped on the shoulder, to be rallied on its manifest inconsistencies, and to have its hand wrung with a real heartiness. Also he believes that the heart of the world is sentime

se a superb man of business, far-seeing, practical, hard-headed, an organiser of victory, a statesman of the human

rspicacity rather than a demonstration of his own powers of exposition. He comes quicker to the point than nine men of busines

es wide open staring at you, his mouth pursed up into a little O of suction, his fingers pressing to his ear the receiver of a

in these moments to ring the bell for an adjutant or a colonel, that official is addressed with the brevity and directness of a manager g

ganisation, a diplomatist who delights in measuring his intelligence against the recalcitrance of mankind, a g

the innermost secret of this

f God and Evil. He believes, too, as few priests of orthodox churches believe, that a man must in very truth be born again before he can inherit the Kingdom of Heaven; that is to say, before he can escape the

joy at Salvation Army Headquarters over one poor miserable brand plucked from the burning than over ninety and nine cheques from wealthy subscribers; but I am per

hole structure of his mind seems to give way, and the spirit appears like a child lost in a dark wood and almost paralysed with fear. Not seldom he was in his father's arms sobbing over the sufferings of humanity and the hardness of the world's heart, mingling his tears with his father's. Often in these late days he is in sore ne

uld weep over sinners, while the other can serve God only by cudgelling the Devil back to hell with imprecations of a rich and florid nature. This stronger self, because of its cudg

ntical, hauntingly identical; so much so that one comes to regard the coachman-like whiskers clapped to the General's cheeks as in the nature of a disguise, thinking of him as his mother's eldest daughter rather than as his

humanity is called upon to bear that fierce fire for the purification of its wicked spirit. She never flinched in confronting the theology of Methodism. She was in

vaster displacement, was in his heart of hearts a wistful believer in everlasting mercy. Few men have been born with a softer heart. He sometimes wondered whether in framing the Regulations of the Salva

ul-saving. We demand the whole of a man, not a little bit of him, or three-fourths of him, or two-thirds of him; we demand every drop of his blood an

hink, to remove some of the skin with the dirt. He believes without question that the only human test of conversion is the uttermost willingness of the soul to be spent in the service of soul-saving. If a man wishes to keep anything back from God, his heart is not given to God. He is no

mns are crude and unlovely; but examine this confession and you find that it is only the language which causes him uneasiness. Approach him on the

modernism, though exaggerated rumours of what is taking place in that fi

with few rivals and no helpers. By the machine which he controls so admirably, men and women all over the world, and usually in the darkest places of the world, are turned fro

to escape from Judaism and conquer the world. It is still true, and I suppose it will remain true to the end of time, that man born of a woman must be born again of the spirit if he is to pass from darkness into light. This, after all, is th

important question of

admirable enough, particularly those of which the public too seldom hears, but a change all the same

ountenance all colloquialisms in Salvationist propaganda. I do not wish, God forbid, to make the Army respectable; I wish it to rema

powerful agencies in the world for spreading the good news of personal religion among the depressed millions of the human race. For even at this present time the lasting work of the Salvationist, the work which makes him

almost rigid singleness of purpose. In conversation with him one cannot help feeling that he is jumpy and excitable; every movement of his extremely mobile face suggests a soul of gutta-percha stretched in all directions by the movements of his brain, and twitching w

om the serious attention of educated people, he stands out with a marked emphasis from the company of far abler men by reason of this power-this sense of unusual vigour and abnormal c

s after-life has widened and intensified that early lesson. Sin is brutality. It is selfishness seeking its low pleasure and its base delight in vilest self-indulgence involving the suffering of others, sometimes their profoundest degradation, even their abso

nment, courting martyrdom. It was from the flaming indignation of his soul that Mr. Stead took fire, and led a crusade against impurity which shocked the conscience of the eighties. But so deep and eternal was this hatred of evil, that General Booth soon came to see that he must express it in some ma

es that while those who regard evil merely as a vestigial memory of human evolution do little or nothing to check its ravages, men like General Booth, and the men and w

tionist are purely intellectual; morally and spiri

.E. O

e.s. of John Orchard, Rugby; m. 1904, Anna Maria (d. 1920), widow of Rev. Ellis Hewitt of Aldershot. Educ.: Board Sch

.E. O