CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON—WILLIAM BOOTH
I have remarked in another place that the man who takes his religion
too seriously stands suspect of not quite believing in it. Those who
are never troubled with doubts are prone to a wild hilarity which often
exposes them to the charge of irreverence and coarse handling of sacred
things. Since Nonconformity has widened, and new theologies have been
propounded, it has become almost oppressively refined. When it was very
narrow and dogmatic, and assured of itself, its chief exponents were
often condemned as vulgar people. They were not really vulgar; they were
only so much on terms with their belief that they could take liberties
with it and all things.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a man of that type. He was an unlearned
man, and if he had been learned it is not at all likely that he would
have been a profound or exact thinker; it is much more probable that he
would have been dulled into mere mediocrity. But if he did not know much
of bookish things, he knew a good deal about things in general, and he
knew (or thought he knew) absolutely one thing in particular, namely,
that he was right in his conception of the purpose of Providence. It
was this certitude, rather than any ingrained coarseness, that made
him so boisterous and rollicking in his dealings with the most solemn
subjects. He looked on “soul-saving” with the same sense of reality that
a bricklayer looks on bricklaying, and he joked about it as a bricklayer
jokes when anything funny is suggested to him by an incident in his work.
Spurgeon did not survive long into the Nineties, but his influence did
not altogether cease to count till the end of the decade. By the new
century it was dying, and to-day it is dead—at any rate, so far as the
high places of Nonconformity are concerned. The name Spurgeon is Dutch,
and the great preacher was a Hollander in his remote origin; he descended
from a refugee who came to this country to escape the Alva persecution.
Spurgeon’s father was an Independent Minister, and he himself was
“converted” by the Primitive Methodists, but at an early age he embraced
the Baptist faith, and he preached as a Baptist his first sermon,
delivered at sixteen, in a Cambridgeshire cottage. His family wished
him to have some sort of “college” education, but he went his own way,
believing then as always that practical work in “soul-saving” was more
important than scholarship.
He was little more than a boy when he gained fame as a London preacher,
addressing congregations of ten thousand at the Surrey Music Hall
before the Metropolitan Tabernacle was built for him. His style was
then very theatrical: a foreign scoffer remarked that his denunciations
of the stage must have been prompted by jealousy, since he was himself
so consummate an actor. In later years he relied less on meretricious
effects and more on his essential earnestness, but to the end he took
any liberties that occurred to him with his subject or his audience. In
other respects he changed little or nothing. Through all the Darwinian
controversy he remained unmoved by the arguments which flurried so
many theological dovecotes. “Huxley and Darwin,” he would say, “can go
to—their ancestors the monkeys,” and he would pause wickedly after the
“to” for his congregation to titter. With the Higher Criticism, as with
evolution, he would have no truck whatever. But against the Church he
had no particular feeling; he read the Anglican divines much as another
man might read Confucius, thinking them curious and interesting people
from whom something might be learned. To the students of the Camberwell
College, indeed, he recommended a book of Anglican sermons. Its author,
he said, had been a parson, still worse a bishop, but despite these grave
disadvantages had been a worthy and able man. In later years he even
withdrew from the Liberation Society, apparently because he felt that his
fellow-Dissenters were on the whole readier than the Church to fall in
with what he called “down-grade” tendencies in biblical criticism. For
the same reason he even withdrew from the Baptist Union. “If,” he said,
“you preach what is new, it will not be true; if you preach what is true,
it will not be new.” For Rome, Spurgeon never pretended tolerance. When
another Baptist owned that during a visit to France he had been present
at the Mass, and “had never felt nearer the presence of God,” Spurgeon
replied that it was a good illustration of the text, “If I make my bed in
hell, behold, Thou art there.” It was, no doubt, his hatred of Rome that
led him in 1886 to become a Liberal Unionist.
His Radicalism, however, had always been of a peculiar kind. He did not
believe in “trusting the people,” since most of the people were miserable
sinners. He was not a Pacifist. “Turn the other cheek,” he used to say,
“but if that is smitten too, another law comes in; you must either go
for your man or get away from him.” It was long, also—not, indeed, until
he grew gouty—before he could be got to adhere to the teetotal movement,
while he simply jeered at an anti-tobacco crusade. Spurgeon himself
liked a good cigar; was in no way an ascetic; lived in style at Norwood,
and used to drive to the Tabernacle in a turnout which would have done
credit to a stockbroker. On the other hand, he was the unrelenting
foe of the theatre, and he denounced dancing as having cost the first
Baptist his head. There was, indeed, in him a great deal more of the old
hard-headed than of the new soft-hearted Puritan. His only departure
from the seventeenth century was in the matter of his jocularity. It was
natural with him—perhaps an inheritance from some jovial Hollander of the
Jan Steen type—but it was also carefully cultivated. He kept an immense
library of funny books to draw on for pulpit use, and was never more
carelessly happy in the telling of a story than when he had studied it in
all its bearings the night before. He never hesitated to use slang when
it seemed to him effective; witness the following:
“It is always best to go where God sends you. Jonah thought he would go
to Tarshish instead of Nineveh, but when the whale got hold of him he was
sucked in.”
“Though you are teetotallers you must all come to your bier at last.”
“To some people Bible reading is like flea-catching; they pick up a
thought here and there, hold it between finger and thumb, and then hop on
somewhere else.”
“Seek to possess both unction and gumption.”
These sentences were addressed to candidates for the Baptist
ministry. It is noteworthy that in such Spurgeon always assumed a
lack of refinement—an assumption which would be hotly resented by the
Nonconformist student of to-day. Especially irritating would be his
advice never to drop an aspirate; to the importance of the initial “H” he
was continually reverting. In deeper matters he was insistent on eternal
punishment; to question hell was to question the Scripture. But he used
to say that no doubt God would show “every consideration” to those
predestined to damnation—how he never explained in detail. He would have
been very angry with feminism if it had been an important thing in his
day; woman, he thought, should be kept in her place; and he despised the
man who was swayed by his wife. He was fond of pointing out that most of
the troubles of the Hebrew patriarchs could be traced to their too much
marriage.
And the rest of the acts of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the wideawake that
he wore, the clerical coat that he would not wear, the puns and money
that he made, the stones that he weighed, and the spiritual bread that
he dispensed, the sermons that he preached, the 30,000 printed copies a
week that he sold, the men that he knew, those that he consorted with,
and those that he assailed mightily—are they not written in chronicles of
Nonconformity? In due time Charles Haddon Spurgeon died, and was gathered
to his fathers, and nobody reigned in his stead, and of the mighty house
that he did not build nothing is written anywhere, for, with all his
brightness and breeziness and firm faith and sturdiness and trite common
sense, he lacked all the qualities that go to the building of anything
but a reputation. He had a voice, and after that little.
[Illustration: GENERAL BOOTH.
(_From a portrait by J. McLure Hamilton._)]
* * * * *
But for just that which Spurgeon wanted William Booth would have been
another Spurgeon. But to his faith and enthusiasm he joined something not
at all common among religious enthusiasts in this country. His heart was
a chaos of crude and uncontrolled emotionalism, but he had the head of
a ruler. It is a common reproach against English Protestantism that it
does not understand how to harness spiritual energy. Of that art William
Booth was a master, and in more favouring circumstances he would probably
have been included in the list of founders of mighty religious orders.
It is tempting to speculate what might have been the present position
of the Salvation Army had Booth, who was brought up as a member of the
Church of England, and had certainly no enmity to that Church, been
encouraged to pursue his work within its communion. Left to himself, he
was unable to provide his organisation with that firm philosophical basis
which seems a necessary condition of permanence in a religious society.
He could invent a hierarchy, but he had to borrow a theology; and the
raggedness of his dogmatic formation was in pathetic contrast with the
splendid “dressing” of his human cohorts. He could offer a dram to the
spiritually fainting, but man cannot live by stimulants alone, and the
Salvation Army had little more in the way of spiritual nutriment to offer
those who began to hunger for something more solid. Its only expedient
was to join the excitement of definite work to that of cloudy religion.
The Army tended even in Booth’s lifetime to become more and more an organ
of social endeavour and less and less a definitely Christian thing; it
was in its lay and not in its religious character that it won during the
Nineties the goodwill of countless excellent pagans, and was patronised
by precisely the same sort of people who had at first assailed it as the
blasphemous travesty of a sect.
“A bawling, fanatical, send-round-the-hatical, pick-up-the-pence old
pair.” So were Booth and his devoted wife described by _Truth_ in the
early Eighties. Fifteen years later the old “General,” now a widower,
was never mentioned in a reputable paper without profound respect. The
inverted commas had long disappeared, and even Royalty condescended to
compliment him on his fine work for the “submerged tenth.” But all this
recognition was really a sign of failure. Or, to put the matter less
crudely, it was a sign that the secondary object of the Army had become
more important than its primary aim. Booth had set out first of all to
save men’s souls, and some people threw cabbage stalks at him, while
others flung him jeers and slanders. The applause only came when it was
evident that, with the incidental disadvantage of brass bands and a crazy
vocabulary of enthusiasm, the Army was very useful for distributing soup
and getting firewood chopped.
Booth proved how thin are the partitions dividing the excess of democracy
from autocratic rule. His government was at first purely paternal.
When the family got too large for his personal rule he had to delegate
authority, but every officer whom he put in a position of trust was
given plenary power to the extent of his commission. “Government by
talk” he had tried and put aside. “This method of work,” he said, “will
never shake the Kingdom of the Devil”; and so he adopted the military
system. In this he was probably only following the suggestion of his own
imperious nature. But if he had been actuated by the deepest craft he
could hardly have hit on a more certain method of keeping his converts
together. Men and women care a great deal less for liberty than for
domination; they will accept most cheerfully subordination for themselves
if it affords them a present chance or a sure prospect of exercising
despotic sway over others. “From the moment,” says Booth, “of our
adopting the simple method of responsible and individual commands and
personal obedience our whole campaign partook of a new character; in
place of the hesitation and almost total want of progress from which
we have been suffering, every development of the work leaped forward.”
The brass band, the flag, and the red jersey probably had comparatively
little to do with the Army’s success. These were useful to attract
attention, and may perhaps have allured some simple-minded and very
unæsthetic people. But apart from the deeper spiritual elements, the
main point, I imagine, was the fascination of authority. Comfortable
people, accustomed to deference throughout life, have little conception
of the hunger for respect which reigns among those who seldom get it.
Indeed, half our social troubles would be over if the “better” classes
could grasp the simple fact that the “lower” classes are much more
sensitive than themselves on all points of dignity. To a mere factory
hand, man or woman—it was a novelty of the Army that it put the sexes
from the first on an exactly equal footing—it was luxury to put off
insignificance with the work-day clothes and put on importance with the
Army uniform. In the Booth hierarchy there was room for the pride of the
wretched and the ambition of the destitute.
It was the great talent of Booth to put to use the most unlikely things.
His use of vulgarity was very characteristic. The vulgarity of some other
popular preachers of the time was a natural emanation. But Booth was not
naturally vulgar; no man could be with such a profile. He had really fine
manners; to a king he would talk as if he were an old king himself; and
there was never a suggestion in his intercourse with the greatest either
of bumptiousness or servility. The vulgarity of his methods was of set
purpose, like St. Francis’s hostility to worldly culture, and, though
it was at once common form to inveigh against the coarse profanities of
a Salvation Army meeting, I have found highly sensitive people far less
repelled by their wildest extravagances than by the much more ordinary
irreverence of the regulation “revivalist.” It might not be true to say
that while others vulgarised sacred things Booth sanctified vulgarity.
But it is true that, if one might sometimes smile at his audacities, they
never made one shudder.
In other conditions, as I have said, Booth might have won immortality
as a saint of the Church. In still other circumstances he might have
been a most considerable statesman. His _Darkest England_ is much more
than a philanthropic manifesto. The schemes outlined in it for dealing
with unemployment by training and emigration are eminently wise and
practical, and, if it is permissible to indulge a regret that his great
qualities were not available for the Church, it may also be suggested
that something was lost by the failure of politicians to make fuller use
of his remarkable insight and experience concerning social problems. The
inspiration on these matters gradually passed from him to the Webbs. It
was not, probably, a change for the better. For though Booth was quite
hard-headed in these concrete matters, he had also that wisdom of the
heart in which Fabianism was deficient. He would say, and quite justly,
in reply to those who argued that the Army attracted people too lazy for
regular work, and actually created a class of unemployables, that John
Jones was outside in the street, without work or food, and something
must be done for him at once; it was useless to wait for a social
revolution. But he was under no illusions as to the nature of existing
society. “There are many vices,” he wrote, “and seven deadly sins;
but of late years many of the seven have contrived to pass themselves
off as virtues. Avarice, for instance, and Pride, when re-baptised
Thrift and Self-Respect, have become the guardian angels of Christian
Civilisation, and as for Envy, it is the corner-stone upon which much
of our competitive system is founded.” Again: “I am a strong believer
in co-operation, but it must be co-operation based on the spirit of
benevolence. I don’t see how any pacific readjustment of the social and
economic relations between classes in this country can be effected except
by the gradual substitution of co-operative associations for the present
wages system.” Assuredly the man who wrote these things was something
more than a fanatic.
Booth’s decision with regard to his children’s education was most typical
of the man. Certain friends offered to pay the expenses of a University
training for his eldest son. No, said Booth; he should enlist in the
Army at an early age, and go through the usual Salvation training. Booth
was not stupid, and could have had none of the stupid man’s contempt
for education. But he seemed to be a little afraid of it, and from his
own point of view who can say he had not reason? In the same spirit
the Churchmen of the Renaissance fought against the teaching of Greek,
not because they were all fools, but because some of them foresaw the
dangers that actually followed. Booth was perhaps not wrong in suspecting
that the higher education of his time, while making a man cocksure
about things now debatable or disproved, would tend to make him dubious
or indifferent about things which in his view permitted neither of
incertitude nor of lukewarmness.
But if he hoped thus to secure to the thing he had made the vitality he
had temporarily imparted to it, the hope was doomed to be disappointed.
It could hardly be fulfilled, in any case, if the Army was to continue
in isolation; for the Army was an order rather than a sect, with a
discipline rather than a creed, and in the absence of its creator’s
inspiration its tendency must have been to harden into formalism. That
process had, indeed, begun even before the General’s death. It was
suggested above that during the Nineties the Salvation Army was wounded
by kindness. In the days of its persecution it was at least free; it
had the feeling that it might just as well be hanged for a sheep as
a lamb. But when the suburbs threw bouquets instead of stones the
Salvationists found that the respect of the respectable is a chain. They
were henceforth fettered. They could expand, but they could not change.
The movement was canalised and stereotyped; it had won recognition as a
useful social adjunct, and it had to live up to its reputation. It became
static in everything but its statistics. Gradually its tunes have grown
old-fashioned; its uniforms are one with the tight military trouser and
the bustled skirt; the _War Cry_ is as definitely a paper with a past as
_Reynolds’s_ or the _Referee_. In its way the Army, no doubt, does as
much good as ever. But the limits of that good are known. And it keeps
nobody awake at night thinking of what might happen with the ferment of a
revolutionary Christianity working among the English poor.
Booth was a great man of his kind—greater far than most of the Right
Honourables and Right Reverends of his day—and it was a mighty thing that
he built from defaced stones and nameless rubble rejected by all others.
But he was too honest to fabricate a new religion, and a religious order
implies a Church to order it.