I recently came across this incredible piece of first-hand history. It is written by Bramwell Booth in 1924. He reminisces about the earliest days of Salvation Army youth work. This document by 'The Young People's General' helps to defend my argument that youth work has played a priority in the earliest days of The Salvation Army - in fact, the priority of youth work easily pre-dates the emergence of the East London Christian Mission's birth in 1865. Catherine Booth, the Mother of the Army clearly was significantly involved in children's work - as was William.Bramwell Booth (1924)
Children and Young People's Work
I
The work of The Army for the Salvation of children really began in the home of the Founders. There is no doubt that the Army Mother even before her marriage entertained very definite views about the work of Divine Grace in the hearts of little children. Her own conversion when a girl at school, and the desire which forthwith took possession of her to make her Savior known, left her also with little question about the service which could be rendered by the young to the cause of Christ. But it was in her own home and amongst her own children that she was to see the practical working out of many of the things which she had believed and hoped from her earliest days. I feel no doubt whatever that in any circumstances she would have deeply impressed on her children the claims of God as she saw them, and I believe she spoke the literal truth when she said: ‘I will not have a wicked child!’ She used to pray in the very presence of her children that she might rather have to lay them in an early grave than to mourn over one who had deserted the path of righteousness.
That their children were won for Christ and that the change which was seen in those children’s lives after their Salvation greatly confirmed and encouraged both parents in their faith for children generally, we know to have been the case from Catherine Booth’s own testimony. ‘If our children may be thus transformed,’ she argued, ‘argued, ‘why not many others, and if many others why not all! Let us call the children to their Savior’s side and plant their feet upon the Rock.’
Her own children had given her great joy. She regarded them as good children measured even by her high standards, and the very fact that she could and did apply her own vigorous – at times even severe – (I speak from experience!) methods of training is in itself a tribute to their early development in much that belongs to what we all value. But she did not for one moment allow this to obscure the fact – the dominating fact – that they must repent and be converted, that they must be born again of the Spirit if they were to be saved. The thought was ever present to her mind, the prayer for their Salvation was ever on her lips. They also knew – they felt from the very dawn of intelligence that she believed they could be saved – that she was praying and laboring to bring them to Christ.
In ‘The Training of Children,’ a most valuable book (of which she was really a joint author with the Founder), I find the following on parents securing the Salvation of their children, and the words seem to make a powerful appeal to Officers who have the care of children in The Army, not only the children in our Homes and Institutions, but the children who attend the ‘Companies’ all over the world.
Set yourselves to [secure their Salvation]. Make it the main purpose of your dealings with the children, keep it in view early and late. Sacrifice everything that seems to stand in your way… Take the children by the hand and lead them with you into the Presence of God. Show them how to converse with Him… Do not be influenced by the notion held by some people that children are not to pray until they are converted. Men and women and children, too, are to pray anywhere and everywhere under all circumstances in they want mercy or anything else at the hands of the Lord. Surely the decree has not gone forth that publicans and little children are not to smite upon their breasts and cry to God to have mercy upon them because they are sinners!
Therefore… urge the children to repent and confess their sins to God and ask for forgiveness. Make them look into their hearts and lives. Help them call up to memory their naughty words and ways and they will go on to remember also the naughty feelings and thoughts of which you have no knowledge, and as they look at their sins the Holy Spirit will help them to see how bad they are. Then they will accuse and condemn themselves and cry for mercy on their own account. Hold them to this… and when they do so trust Him He will appear to them as their own Savior and they will go into the Kingdom with joy and thanksgiving.
It was upon such principles as these that the Army Mother worked, and saw her children go one by one, as the Founder says, into the Kingdom with joy and thanksgiving.
But I am thinking of something more than this when I say that the work of The Army for the Young began in the Founders’ home. While their four elder children were still between ten and fifteen years of age they began to invite their acquaintances and the children of neighbors to visit their schoolroom at Gore Road and to hear from them the strange sweet story of a Savior’s love shed abroad in the heart of a child. Those occasional and very small and at first quite ‘unorganized’ gatherings were different in almost very particular from the ‘children’s services’ which the Founder had often included in his special missions in the various towns. The only thing they had in common was an earnest desire and appeal that some one should decide for Christ. Nevertheless those meetings had an important result. They convinced the Army Mother, and her influence prevailed with the Founder himself, that it would be possible to organize and sustain a regular work for the Salvation of children by means of the children themselves. From that moment, 1871, efforts began with this end in view. Tentative plans were made, experiments were tried, special campaigns – all, or nearly all, in a small way – were instituted, always with these objects: (1) the immediate Salvation of the children by faith in Jesus, and (2) their organization and training to do work for the Salvation of other children.
II
Soon after this a Lay Secretary of the Mission named Rapson [Some of Mr. Rapson’s own children became Officers in The Army in the United States in later years.] began to interest himself in this work and was appointed to organize it. A small Hall in the East of London (Thomas’s Passage) was placed at his disposal, and Meetings were held regularly on Sundays and on two or three nights of the week. The neighborhood was a very rough one. The police were obtrusively unfriendly and the juvenile portion of the population practically heathen as regards respect for any form of religion. The Meetings, always, (if we so permitted) crowded on Sundays, were more or less disorderly, sometimes even riotous. But they were nevertheless wonderfully blessed. Children – ordinary boys and girls – were saved, and at once took their stand for Christ. Some of them, with whom I became personally acquainted, suffered cruel ill treatment at the hands of their former companions as well as from their parents, and yet stood firm in their new joy and love. Presently not a few of their persecutors were led to Christ through their influence. Small meetings were held on the week evenings for instruction and for prayer and testimony, some especially in preparation, week by week, for the coming Sunday. Always the greatest impression was produced on even the most disorderly gatherings by the saved children’s own testimonies which often ran something as follows, though I cannot of course pretend to reproduce correctly the East End terminology or pronunciation of those days. A boy of twelve or thirteen, known perhaps as ‘Happy Arthur’ or ‘Praying Tim,’ would say:
I say, you boys, just listen half a minute… You know I was always getting into scrapes, you know I often did you in at ‘two and one’ (a kind of pavement game of that time with marbles). (A howl of derision here.) Well, I say, look here – you know I don’t do it now – do I? (dead silence). Even mother says I am different and she has stopped ‘sugaring’ me (a play on the word cane) and why? –‘cos… you know why – I’m saved – I am in the Mission for Jesus Christ, and I pray to Him and He helps me! You can come! We want you to come! Sam (turning to a particular boy chum with just as much show of feeling as a boy might risk in a company largely made up of boys), Sam, I do wish you would come – God can do for you the very thing He’s done for me.
Such testimonies uttered in evident sincerity usually produced a marked effect upon the boys. The girls were more influenced by the girls, who, though often very shy, were generally more emotional and sometimes wonderfully eloquent with the untrained eloquence of the heart. I have more than once seen a wholly unruly audience of two or three hundred children subdued by tears by the simple story of a girl’s struggle for her mother’s Salvation – told by the child herself.
In these Missions both in Whitechapel, and, as the work spread, at Three Coats Lane, in Bethnal Green and in Cambridge Heath, we suffered much open and violent opposition. I have now and again been with Rapson and a few of the saved boys and girls held prisoner for hours at a stretch, it being impossible to escape. Cheap fireworks were freely used to annoy, and ‘stinkers’ made from a mixture of common treacle, red pepper, and paraffin, which burned slowly and suffocatingly, were constantly in evidence! Tin whistles and broken tea trays sometimes produced a kind of pandemonium, while every type of East End fun was freely indulged in. But the work went on and proved the parent of much that followed. Numbers of children were undoubtedly saved, some of whom died in triumph, while others lived to fight as Salvation Soldiers in the days which then were far ahead.
The advance of the work to many aspects of the adult activities brought to the front more and more children, and questions arose as to the wisdom of allowing them to take part in the Meetings other than for children. Many of the boys especially developed striking gifts, and we began to use some of them in the adult Meetings – they spoke and sang and fished with much acceptance. Here were new dangers – very real dangers. But we had always a warning before us, and though the use of children in this way – that is, apart from their own Meetings – died down considerably as their own work extended and was better organized, I do not think this was because any very real harm had come of it. With regard to this aspect of the matter and the danger for children, especially the danger of their losing the simplicity of children, the Army Mother said at a Council in 1884: ‘Now directly a boy or a girl leaves off being simple, he or she leaves off being a child, and becomes a sort of a mixture between a grown-up person and an imp.’ There were perhaps, a few of these strange ‘mixtures’ to be found amongst us – but never very many.
It was in the year 1881 that ‘The Young Soldier,’ at first called ‘The Little Soldier,’ was launched. It was a weekly paper and proved an immediate success. It has been of incalculable service to this work and of immense help also to many people outside our ranks who love the children and desire to bring them to Christ. It publishes freely communications from our Young People and, with its daughters in other lands, is probably the only newspaper in existence which can be placed in the hands of a child anxious about its own Salvation with any prospect of leading it to Christ.
In all the activities and organizing of those early days, rough and rollicking as they often were, there was kept steadily in view the original idea – carrying on work for the Salvation of children by the children themselves. Thus, as with the adult, or, as it has come to be called, the Senior work, it was the creation of an organized force which was aimed at. Just as we wanted an Army of Salvation among the grown-up people, so we wanted an Army of Salvation among the children. Such an Army must, of course, have serious limitations, as for example, in always losing its Soldiers to become Senior Soldiers as soon as they reach the age of maturity, and again, because its Recruits – Junior Soldiers as we call them – cannot be as fully under our direction as the Seniors, owing, for one thing, to the influence and control of their parents. Nevertheless, it was an Army we set out to raise, possessed of the same over-ruling spirit and purpose as that among the Seniors. I am afraid that this is sometimes lost sight of even to-day. And yet any one who really studies (how earnestly I wish that Officers would study the Army more), any one who studies the work in this department must see at once how this thought runs through it all. The raising of an Army is, in fact, the idea which united the various operations and brings them all into one harmonious whole having one great aim.
The saved children – duly registered and cared for as such – are encouraged to testify to what God has done for them; they are urged to win their brothers and sisters and schoolfellows to Christ. Yes, and their parents also. They are to conduct their own Open-Air Meetings (I was so pleased to find from an Officer home on furlough in New Zealand that this is already seen in some Corps in China), and these Open-Airs were and are sometimes held in the face of much opposition and derision. The children are encouraged to speak for themselves as Junior Soldiers. They hold their own meetings for prayer (I have not heard lately of more than one blessed awakening which began with Children’s Prayer Meetings – in one case it was prayer for the Salvation of their own parents); they sell ‘The Young Soldier’ (I fear that this is not as frequent as it once was); they are encouraged to wear uniform (and warned against wearing showy or worldly clothes), urged to join the Young People’s Bands or Singing Companies, and to play and sing for God. The elder ones are given Companies as soon as possible; they are encouraged to become Corps Cadets training for future work in The Army, and to make public confession of their intention to consecrate their lives as Officers – sometimes for service in the heathen lands.
All this and much more which is seen amongst us points to an organized force deliberately planned and led to aggressive work for God and man, and is as far as the east is from the west from a mere Sunday School or even from a special Service Mission.
III
After a time it was found that many of the children as they grew out of childhood were in need of another kind of care. We saw that if their Army spirit was to be maintained there was a need for organized arrangements to watch over them and to employ them more adequately in God’s work for those of their own sex and age. The loss of some splendid lads from North London Corps in 1900 gave me great concern. It happened at the same moment that we were finding considerable difficulty in keeping up the supply of Candidates for Officership, though young people who had grown up in The Army were to be found at most of the Corps in the United Kingdom and at many Corps in other countries. It occurred to me that some definite effort was needed to reach them as Young People, as distinct from children, and to united and organize them still to witness for Christ and to work for others. After considerable thought I had a conference with some leading Officers. These, with the exception of Mrs. Booth and dear Commissioner Howard, rather discouraged my effort as likely to prove ‘hardly worth the time and labor involved.’ I began, however, by inviting them between three and four hundred young folks of sixteen and above of certain London Corps to spend a day with me in Council at Clapton. About two hundred and fifty came. Their very appearance at once showed to us all how necessary it was that something should be done, and their intense interest and attention convinced us that something could be done.
This, the first ‘Young People’s Day,’ proved a success. The Spirit of God moved amongst us. The confessions and consecrations at the mercy-seat put us in possession of important facts, first hand, and led to all kinds of inquiries, visitations, suggestions, experiments, for helping the young folks. Other ‘Days’ were held. Small groups for prayer and work, of those we desired to bless, were formed. A new Department was set up at National Headquarters. The Founder entered with enthusiasm into the new departure. Special regulations were issued. Presently Officers were appointed to the Divisions as Young People’s Secretaries, and to-day we count by tens of thousands in the Old Country, and by tens of thousands elsewhere, the Young People who are fighting in our ranks for God, for their own holiness, and for the souls of those around them. It has been in large measure by them that we have been able to extend the work among the children, and it is from their ranks in many lands that we have recruited our forces in training for Army Officership both in the West and the East.
It was not easy for some Officers, either Field or Staff, in the Homeland or elsewhere, to realize the importance of this development, and I fear that even now there are those amongst us who see but dimly – some see not at all and perhaps never will – what a mighty future there I for this work. It is not only for the sake of the Young People themselves that it should be done – to promote their Godly living – their nearness to Christ – their heart purity. It is also because they – the young and untaught and in-experienced of to-day will, to say nothing of Officers, be amongst the most important of Soldiers, the Bandsman and Songsters, the Local Officers of the future. We see it already. I am writing this article in New Zealand after a tour in Australia, and almost everywhere I have found the energetic Locals or Field Officers who, with beaming countenances, have come to shake my hand saying: ‘It was at the Young People’s Council at such or such a place that I gave myself fully to God.’
I say in deep earnestness that there is no limit to the influence for good which may be exerted by the Young People of to-day on the future of the Army, and through The Army upon the world. Shall we be equal to our chance in dealing with them? One thing is evident, we shall only succeed in any really big or world-wide sense of the word, in so far as we can lay hold and keep hold of the young life of the nations.
IV
I am deeply anxious that this work should continue to have the right direction. As to the outside children, we are in danger of overdoing what might be called the educational side of our efforts. It is, no doubt, good to teach them the truths which the Word of God declares, but if we stop there we have done but little for them! Their Salvation, while children, is to be our first great aim. We are not a Sunday School – and, by the war, I wish the use of that word to be given up forever; it is not an Army term. It is, in fact, a misleading term, especially now that the Socialists and Bolshevists have so freely appropriated it. The Sunday Schools of the various Churches have largely failed in molding the character and directing the lives of multitudes of the children whom they whom they have had under their teaching for years, just because they have stopped short with instruction. What is the good of Bible reading, apart from Bible obedience; of observing Sunday if we profane the weekdays? What, indeed, is the use of any teaching which does not in fact change and exalt the life and make it a life after Christ’s own pattern and spirit! And how can this be done, whether in full-grown men or in children, without the New Birth and the New Creation which come by faith in Him? We know very well that it cannot be done. We must go on to Salvation. That is our own proper work; that is the reason for our existence. If we fail there we fail altogether! Alas! Is it not true that in some places we have failed? Have we not to bear the pain of seeing many children for whom we have labored drift of seeing many children for whom we have labored drift away from us and from God? Is there not in this a ground for grave concern, a call for close examination of our methods? In such cases ought there not at least to be at once a new beginning in determined and unsparing effort to bring the children to Christ?
And equally I wish our leaders to keep well before them that our aim continues to be, and must be, the raising and maintaining of an organized force for God among the children. The objective remains ever the same. The children are called to be saved, and are chosen to fight and, if needs be, suffer, in order to win their fellows to Christ.
Yes – to suffer! Just as many of the children in the early days of Christianity fought and witnessed and died for their testimony, so our children are to be led and trained to expect and to face opposition, whether in the form of ridicule at school or hatred at home, or of even more active persecution. [I wish more use could be made of that wonderful little book, ‘Red Flowers of Martyrdom,’ by the late Brigadier Eileen Douglas. It contains some of the most remarkable and most glorious histories of children who gave their lives for Christ.] Let us help them. Let us inspire them. Let us unite them. Let us lead them not merely to know the love and power of Christ Jesus in themselves, but to feel the burden of souls and to strive, in spite of suffering and distress, for their Salvation in their own simple, loving, trustful way.
As to the future of the Young People, as distinguished from the children (and it is important to remember that The Army makes a very definite distinction between them), I am anxious to insist upon the importance of improving and developing them as individuals. Important as it is to see that there is a good beginning – that is to say, that the Holy Spirit has accomplished His own work in the New Creation, and that they are united with The Army not only outwardly as Soldiers, but in the spirit and purpose which govern it – it is equally important to plan for the cultivation of their spiritual powers. Even now, though they are with us, all will fail unless we learn how to appeal successfully to their moral instincts and perceptions – to conscience and feeling and love.
I am sure that we ought to make more insistent individual appeal in the name of the Great Savior to what is best in them, definitely calling upon them to crush what is selfish and base, and to cultivate what is unselfish and pure. Let us raise on high the standard of a Godly life. No professions, no prayers, no labor for others, sacred as that may be, can take the place in daily work and life of humility, both of mind and spirit, of meekness, of silence under provocation, of faith in God, of kindness to friend and foe – especially to the weak – of respect for elders, of faithful adherence to promises, of integrity and self-control, of modesty, chastity, fidelity, and honor.
I am certain there is a very real danger, especially in certain classes who are independent and self-reliant, and in others who are emotional and excitable, that the outward exercises of our religion should come to be substituted for these practical graces and virtues which are the gifts of Jesus Christ for everyday life and labor, and without which all will come to nought.
It is just as possible in The Army as among the Buddhists, the Roman Catholics, or the High Church people to substitute forms and ceremonies, music and marches, testimonies and song, for the life – the life with Christ in God – that is, the separate life, the life apart from the world. These things, no matter how pleasing, unless they are attested and supported by rightness and truth and loving sincerity and gentle Christlikeness, become really hateful to God. Instead of helping the Young People to Holiness they really dull the conscience and injure the soul. But must we not teach them to love and seek souls? Of course we must, but that is not the whole of our ambition to them. We want them to be high examples themselves of what the justifying and sanctifying Grace of God will do for ordinary people in the ordinary affairs, the ordinary conduct of ordinary life.
I am sure we ought also to do more in instructing our Young People how to follow the New Light that God gives them from time to time. One of the leading facts of Army experience in every land is that they do receive new Light, that in fact they are constantly the objects of special visitations of the Holy Spirit. Let us show them how to distinguish these visitations from the mere impulses of human desire. Above all let us teach them to go forward following the Light, not to live on past revelations or mercies no matter how gracious or glorious they may have been.
Many Young People come to a dead stop in spiritual things for the want of courage to follow those new revelations which God gives of His will, and in the vital years when character is formed, and the future is largely molded from day to day, to half in following God is perilous, to draw back is fatal.
The system of the Army, the publicity given to much of our work, even at the smaller Corps, the prominence into which many of our Young People are thrown and the fact that in most countries they are seldom protected by persecution and hardship makes for a kind of self-consciousness and selfishness which once they creep in spoil the service, even of the best. The speaking, the singing, the fishing, together with the uniform and the constantly being under observation, all have danger for them. They tend to cultivate self, and may introduce-sometimes do-into their service a sense of their importance or usefulness or attractiveness, or of their ability. I will not claim that absolutely selfless service is likely for any large proportion of them, but we must never forget that if we want them to benefit by the service they render to God and man we must take them out of themselves, we must show them how to hide themselves even in the moments of their greatest prominence, we must help them to make it actually true in their lives ‘Not I-Not I-Not I-but Christ who liveth in me.’
My dear comrades, in all this let us make it plain to our young folks that God is Law as well as Love, that indeed we can say ‘God is Law’ as truly as we say ‘God is Love.’ We need to insist, with that repetition which live will show us how to employ, that you cannot sow one thing and reap another no matter how much you may desire to do so, or how good and sincere you may have been or what suffering for yourself or others the reaping will involve. It is still true that if men fall into the fire they will be burned. That we cannot gather grapes off thorns, or figs off thistles. It is in fact just as true as ever it was that lives built on the sands of wrongdoing or wrong thinking or wrong feeling, or upon mere professions of religion, will, when the storms come, fall and perish-fall and perish forever.
The work of The Army for the Salvation of children really began in the home of the Founders. There is no doubt that the Army Mother even before her marriage entertained very definite views about the work of Divine Grace in the hearts of little children. Her own conversion when a girl at school, and the desire which forthwith took possession of her to make her Savior known, left her also with little question about the service which could be rendered by the young to the cause of Christ. But it was in her own home and amongst her own children that she was to see the practical working out of many of the things which she had believed and hoped from her earliest days. I feel no doubt whatever that in any circumstances she would have deeply impressed on her children the claims of God as she saw them, and I believe she spoke the literal truth when she said: ‘I will not have a wicked child!’ She used to pray in the very presence of her children that she might rather have to lay them in an early grave than to mourn over one who had deserted the path of righteousness.
That their children were won for Christ and that the change which was seen in those children’s lives after their Salvation greatly confirmed and encouraged both parents in their faith for children generally, we know to have been the case from Catherine Booth’s own testimony. ‘If our children may be thus transformed,’ she argued, ‘argued, ‘why not many others, and if many others why not all! Let us call the children to their Savior’s side and plant their feet upon the Rock.’
Her own children had given her great joy. She regarded them as good children measured even by her high standards, and the very fact that she could and did apply her own vigorous – at times even severe – (I speak from experience!) methods of training is in itself a tribute to their early development in much that belongs to what we all value. But she did not for one moment allow this to obscure the fact – the dominating fact – that they must repent and be converted, that they must be born again of the Spirit if they were to be saved. The thought was ever present to her mind, the prayer for their Salvation was ever on her lips. They also knew – they felt from the very dawn of intelligence that she believed they could be saved – that she was praying and laboring to bring them to Christ.
In ‘The Training of Children,’ a most valuable book (of which she was really a joint author with the Founder), I find the following on parents securing the Salvation of their children, and the words seem to make a powerful appeal to Officers who have the care of children in The Army, not only the children in our Homes and Institutions, but the children who attend the ‘Companies’ all over the world.
Set yourselves to [secure their Salvation]. Make it the main purpose of your dealings with the children, keep it in view early and late. Sacrifice everything that seems to stand in your way… Take the children by the hand and lead them with you into the Presence of God. Show them how to converse with Him… Do not be influenced by the notion held by some people that children are not to pray until they are converted. Men and women and children, too, are to pray anywhere and everywhere under all circumstances in they want mercy or anything else at the hands of the Lord. Surely the decree has not gone forth that publicans and little children are not to smite upon their breasts and cry to God to have mercy upon them because they are sinners!
Therefore… urge the children to repent and confess their sins to God and ask for forgiveness. Make them look into their hearts and lives. Help them call up to memory their naughty words and ways and they will go on to remember also the naughty feelings and thoughts of which you have no knowledge, and as they look at their sins the Holy Spirit will help them to see how bad they are. Then they will accuse and condemn themselves and cry for mercy on their own account. Hold them to this… and when they do so trust Him He will appear to them as their own Savior and they will go into the Kingdom with joy and thanksgiving.
It was upon such principles as these that the Army Mother worked, and saw her children go one by one, as the Founder says, into the Kingdom with joy and thanksgiving.
But I am thinking of something more than this when I say that the work of The Army for the Young began in the Founders’ home. While their four elder children were still between ten and fifteen years of age they began to invite their acquaintances and the children of neighbors to visit their schoolroom at Gore Road and to hear from them the strange sweet story of a Savior’s love shed abroad in the heart of a child. Those occasional and very small and at first quite ‘unorganized’ gatherings were different in almost very particular from the ‘children’s services’ which the Founder had often included in his special missions in the various towns. The only thing they had in common was an earnest desire and appeal that some one should decide for Christ. Nevertheless those meetings had an important result. They convinced the Army Mother, and her influence prevailed with the Founder himself, that it would be possible to organize and sustain a regular work for the Salvation of children by means of the children themselves. From that moment, 1871, efforts began with this end in view. Tentative plans were made, experiments were tried, special campaigns – all, or nearly all, in a small way – were instituted, always with these objects: (1) the immediate Salvation of the children by faith in Jesus, and (2) their organization and training to do work for the Salvation of other children.
II
Soon after this a Lay Secretary of the Mission named Rapson [Some of Mr. Rapson’s own children became Officers in The Army in the United States in later years.] began to interest himself in this work and was appointed to organize it. A small Hall in the East of London (Thomas’s Passage) was placed at his disposal, and Meetings were held regularly on Sundays and on two or three nights of the week. The neighborhood was a very rough one. The police were obtrusively unfriendly and the juvenile portion of the population practically heathen as regards respect for any form of religion. The Meetings, always, (if we so permitted) crowded on Sundays, were more or less disorderly, sometimes even riotous. But they were nevertheless wonderfully blessed. Children – ordinary boys and girls – were saved, and at once took their stand for Christ. Some of them, with whom I became personally acquainted, suffered cruel ill treatment at the hands of their former companions as well as from their parents, and yet stood firm in their new joy and love. Presently not a few of their persecutors were led to Christ through their influence. Small meetings were held on the week evenings for instruction and for prayer and testimony, some especially in preparation, week by week, for the coming Sunday. Always the greatest impression was produced on even the most disorderly gatherings by the saved children’s own testimonies which often ran something as follows, though I cannot of course pretend to reproduce correctly the East End terminology or pronunciation of those days. A boy of twelve or thirteen, known perhaps as ‘Happy Arthur’ or ‘Praying Tim,’ would say:
I say, you boys, just listen half a minute… You know I was always getting into scrapes, you know I often did you in at ‘two and one’ (a kind of pavement game of that time with marbles). (A howl of derision here.) Well, I say, look here – you know I don’t do it now – do I? (dead silence). Even mother says I am different and she has stopped ‘sugaring’ me (a play on the word cane) and why? –‘cos… you know why – I’m saved – I am in the Mission for Jesus Christ, and I pray to Him and He helps me! You can come! We want you to come! Sam (turning to a particular boy chum with just as much show of feeling as a boy might risk in a company largely made up of boys), Sam, I do wish you would come – God can do for you the very thing He’s done for me.
Such testimonies uttered in evident sincerity usually produced a marked effect upon the boys. The girls were more influenced by the girls, who, though often very shy, were generally more emotional and sometimes wonderfully eloquent with the untrained eloquence of the heart. I have more than once seen a wholly unruly audience of two or three hundred children subdued by tears by the simple story of a girl’s struggle for her mother’s Salvation – told by the child herself.
In these Missions both in Whitechapel, and, as the work spread, at Three Coats Lane, in Bethnal Green and in Cambridge Heath, we suffered much open and violent opposition. I have now and again been with Rapson and a few of the saved boys and girls held prisoner for hours at a stretch, it being impossible to escape. Cheap fireworks were freely used to annoy, and ‘stinkers’ made from a mixture of common treacle, red pepper, and paraffin, which burned slowly and suffocatingly, were constantly in evidence! Tin whistles and broken tea trays sometimes produced a kind of pandemonium, while every type of East End fun was freely indulged in. But the work went on and proved the parent of much that followed. Numbers of children were undoubtedly saved, some of whom died in triumph, while others lived to fight as Salvation Soldiers in the days which then were far ahead.
The advance of the work to many aspects of the adult activities brought to the front more and more children, and questions arose as to the wisdom of allowing them to take part in the Meetings other than for children. Many of the boys especially developed striking gifts, and we began to use some of them in the adult Meetings – they spoke and sang and fished with much acceptance. Here were new dangers – very real dangers. But we had always a warning before us, and though the use of children in this way – that is, apart from their own Meetings – died down considerably as their own work extended and was better organized, I do not think this was because any very real harm had come of it. With regard to this aspect of the matter and the danger for children, especially the danger of their losing the simplicity of children, the Army Mother said at a Council in 1884: ‘Now directly a boy or a girl leaves off being simple, he or she leaves off being a child, and becomes a sort of a mixture between a grown-up person and an imp.’ There were perhaps, a few of these strange ‘mixtures’ to be found amongst us – but never very many.
It was in the year 1881 that ‘The Young Soldier,’ at first called ‘The Little Soldier,’ was launched. It was a weekly paper and proved an immediate success. It has been of incalculable service to this work and of immense help also to many people outside our ranks who love the children and desire to bring them to Christ. It publishes freely communications from our Young People and, with its daughters in other lands, is probably the only newspaper in existence which can be placed in the hands of a child anxious about its own Salvation with any prospect of leading it to Christ.
In all the activities and organizing of those early days, rough and rollicking as they often were, there was kept steadily in view the original idea – carrying on work for the Salvation of children by the children themselves. Thus, as with the adult, or, as it has come to be called, the Senior work, it was the creation of an organized force which was aimed at. Just as we wanted an Army of Salvation among the grown-up people, so we wanted an Army of Salvation among the children. Such an Army must, of course, have serious limitations, as for example, in always losing its Soldiers to become Senior Soldiers as soon as they reach the age of maturity, and again, because its Recruits – Junior Soldiers as we call them – cannot be as fully under our direction as the Seniors, owing, for one thing, to the influence and control of their parents. Nevertheless, it was an Army we set out to raise, possessed of the same over-ruling spirit and purpose as that among the Seniors. I am afraid that this is sometimes lost sight of even to-day. And yet any one who really studies (how earnestly I wish that Officers would study the Army more), any one who studies the work in this department must see at once how this thought runs through it all. The raising of an Army is, in fact, the idea which united the various operations and brings them all into one harmonious whole having one great aim.
The saved children – duly registered and cared for as such – are encouraged to testify to what God has done for them; they are urged to win their brothers and sisters and schoolfellows to Christ. Yes, and their parents also. They are to conduct their own Open-Air Meetings (I was so pleased to find from an Officer home on furlough in New Zealand that this is already seen in some Corps in China), and these Open-Airs were and are sometimes held in the face of much opposition and derision. The children are encouraged to speak for themselves as Junior Soldiers. They hold their own meetings for prayer (I have not heard lately of more than one blessed awakening which began with Children’s Prayer Meetings – in one case it was prayer for the Salvation of their own parents); they sell ‘The Young Soldier’ (I fear that this is not as frequent as it once was); they are encouraged to wear uniform (and warned against wearing showy or worldly clothes), urged to join the Young People’s Bands or Singing Companies, and to play and sing for God. The elder ones are given Companies as soon as possible; they are encouraged to become Corps Cadets training for future work in The Army, and to make public confession of their intention to consecrate their lives as Officers – sometimes for service in the heathen lands.
All this and much more which is seen amongst us points to an organized force deliberately planned and led to aggressive work for God and man, and is as far as the east is from the west from a mere Sunday School or even from a special Service Mission.
III
After a time it was found that many of the children as they grew out of childhood were in need of another kind of care. We saw that if their Army spirit was to be maintained there was a need for organized arrangements to watch over them and to employ them more adequately in God’s work for those of their own sex and age. The loss of some splendid lads from North London Corps in 1900 gave me great concern. It happened at the same moment that we were finding considerable difficulty in keeping up the supply of Candidates for Officership, though young people who had grown up in The Army were to be found at most of the Corps in the United Kingdom and at many Corps in other countries. It occurred to me that some definite effort was needed to reach them as Young People, as distinct from children, and to united and organize them still to witness for Christ and to work for others. After considerable thought I had a conference with some leading Officers. These, with the exception of Mrs. Booth and dear Commissioner Howard, rather discouraged my effort as likely to prove ‘hardly worth the time and labor involved.’ I began, however, by inviting them between three and four hundred young folks of sixteen and above of certain London Corps to spend a day with me in Council at Clapton. About two hundred and fifty came. Their very appearance at once showed to us all how necessary it was that something should be done, and their intense interest and attention convinced us that something could be done.
This, the first ‘Young People’s Day,’ proved a success. The Spirit of God moved amongst us. The confessions and consecrations at the mercy-seat put us in possession of important facts, first hand, and led to all kinds of inquiries, visitations, suggestions, experiments, for helping the young folks. Other ‘Days’ were held. Small groups for prayer and work, of those we desired to bless, were formed. A new Department was set up at National Headquarters. The Founder entered with enthusiasm into the new departure. Special regulations were issued. Presently Officers were appointed to the Divisions as Young People’s Secretaries, and to-day we count by tens of thousands in the Old Country, and by tens of thousands elsewhere, the Young People who are fighting in our ranks for God, for their own holiness, and for the souls of those around them. It has been in large measure by them that we have been able to extend the work among the children, and it is from their ranks in many lands that we have recruited our forces in training for Army Officership both in the West and the East.
It was not easy for some Officers, either Field or Staff, in the Homeland or elsewhere, to realize the importance of this development, and I fear that even now there are those amongst us who see but dimly – some see not at all and perhaps never will – what a mighty future there I for this work. It is not only for the sake of the Young People themselves that it should be done – to promote their Godly living – their nearness to Christ – their heart purity. It is also because they – the young and untaught and in-experienced of to-day will, to say nothing of Officers, be amongst the most important of Soldiers, the Bandsman and Songsters, the Local Officers of the future. We see it already. I am writing this article in New Zealand after a tour in Australia, and almost everywhere I have found the energetic Locals or Field Officers who, with beaming countenances, have come to shake my hand saying: ‘It was at the Young People’s Council at such or such a place that I gave myself fully to God.’
I say in deep earnestness that there is no limit to the influence for good which may be exerted by the Young People of to-day on the future of the Army, and through The Army upon the world. Shall we be equal to our chance in dealing with them? One thing is evident, we shall only succeed in any really big or world-wide sense of the word, in so far as we can lay hold and keep hold of the young life of the nations.
IV
I am deeply anxious that this work should continue to have the right direction. As to the outside children, we are in danger of overdoing what might be called the educational side of our efforts. It is, no doubt, good to teach them the truths which the Word of God declares, but if we stop there we have done but little for them! Their Salvation, while children, is to be our first great aim. We are not a Sunday School – and, by the war, I wish the use of that word to be given up forever; it is not an Army term. It is, in fact, a misleading term, especially now that the Socialists and Bolshevists have so freely appropriated it. The Sunday Schools of the various Churches have largely failed in molding the character and directing the lives of multitudes of the children whom they whom they have had under their teaching for years, just because they have stopped short with instruction. What is the good of Bible reading, apart from Bible obedience; of observing Sunday if we profane the weekdays? What, indeed, is the use of any teaching which does not in fact change and exalt the life and make it a life after Christ’s own pattern and spirit! And how can this be done, whether in full-grown men or in children, without the New Birth and the New Creation which come by faith in Him? We know very well that it cannot be done. We must go on to Salvation. That is our own proper work; that is the reason for our existence. If we fail there we fail altogether! Alas! Is it not true that in some places we have failed? Have we not to bear the pain of seeing many children for whom we have labored drift of seeing many children for whom we have labored drift away from us and from God? Is there not in this a ground for grave concern, a call for close examination of our methods? In such cases ought there not at least to be at once a new beginning in determined and unsparing effort to bring the children to Christ?
And equally I wish our leaders to keep well before them that our aim continues to be, and must be, the raising and maintaining of an organized force for God among the children. The objective remains ever the same. The children are called to be saved, and are chosen to fight and, if needs be, suffer, in order to win their fellows to Christ.
Yes – to suffer! Just as many of the children in the early days of Christianity fought and witnessed and died for their testimony, so our children are to be led and trained to expect and to face opposition, whether in the form of ridicule at school or hatred at home, or of even more active persecution. [I wish more use could be made of that wonderful little book, ‘Red Flowers of Martyrdom,’ by the late Brigadier Eileen Douglas. It contains some of the most remarkable and most glorious histories of children who gave their lives for Christ.] Let us help them. Let us inspire them. Let us unite them. Let us lead them not merely to know the love and power of Christ Jesus in themselves, but to feel the burden of souls and to strive, in spite of suffering and distress, for their Salvation in their own simple, loving, trustful way.
As to the future of the Young People, as distinguished from the children (and it is important to remember that The Army makes a very definite distinction between them), I am anxious to insist upon the importance of improving and developing them as individuals. Important as it is to see that there is a good beginning – that is to say, that the Holy Spirit has accomplished His own work in the New Creation, and that they are united with The Army not only outwardly as Soldiers, but in the spirit and purpose which govern it – it is equally important to plan for the cultivation of their spiritual powers. Even now, though they are with us, all will fail unless we learn how to appeal successfully to their moral instincts and perceptions – to conscience and feeling and love.
I am sure that we ought to make more insistent individual appeal in the name of the Great Savior to what is best in them, definitely calling upon them to crush what is selfish and base, and to cultivate what is unselfish and pure. Let us raise on high the standard of a Godly life. No professions, no prayers, no labor for others, sacred as that may be, can take the place in daily work and life of humility, both of mind and spirit, of meekness, of silence under provocation, of faith in God, of kindness to friend and foe – especially to the weak – of respect for elders, of faithful adherence to promises, of integrity and self-control, of modesty, chastity, fidelity, and honor.
I am certain there is a very real danger, especially in certain classes who are independent and self-reliant, and in others who are emotional and excitable, that the outward exercises of our religion should come to be substituted for these practical graces and virtues which are the gifts of Jesus Christ for everyday life and labor, and without which all will come to nought.
It is just as possible in The Army as among the Buddhists, the Roman Catholics, or the High Church people to substitute forms and ceremonies, music and marches, testimonies and song, for the life – the life with Christ in God – that is, the separate life, the life apart from the world. These things, no matter how pleasing, unless they are attested and supported by rightness and truth and loving sincerity and gentle Christlikeness, become really hateful to God. Instead of helping the Young People to Holiness they really dull the conscience and injure the soul. But must we not teach them to love and seek souls? Of course we must, but that is not the whole of our ambition to them. We want them to be high examples themselves of what the justifying and sanctifying Grace of God will do for ordinary people in the ordinary affairs, the ordinary conduct of ordinary life.
I am sure we ought also to do more in instructing our Young People how to follow the New Light that God gives them from time to time. One of the leading facts of Army experience in every land is that they do receive new Light, that in fact they are constantly the objects of special visitations of the Holy Spirit. Let us show them how to distinguish these visitations from the mere impulses of human desire. Above all let us teach them to go forward following the Light, not to live on past revelations or mercies no matter how gracious or glorious they may have been.
Many Young People come to a dead stop in spiritual things for the want of courage to follow those new revelations which God gives of His will, and in the vital years when character is formed, and the future is largely molded from day to day, to half in following God is perilous, to draw back is fatal.
The system of the Army, the publicity given to much of our work, even at the smaller Corps, the prominence into which many of our Young People are thrown and the fact that in most countries they are seldom protected by persecution and hardship makes for a kind of self-consciousness and selfishness which once they creep in spoil the service, even of the best. The speaking, the singing, the fishing, together with the uniform and the constantly being under observation, all have danger for them. They tend to cultivate self, and may introduce-sometimes do-into their service a sense of their importance or usefulness or attractiveness, or of their ability. I will not claim that absolutely selfless service is likely for any large proportion of them, but we must never forget that if we want them to benefit by the service they render to God and man we must take them out of themselves, we must show them how to hide themselves even in the moments of their greatest prominence, we must help them to make it actually true in their lives ‘Not I-Not I-Not I-but Christ who liveth in me.’
My dear comrades, in all this let us make it plain to our young folks that God is Law as well as Love, that indeed we can say ‘God is Law’ as truly as we say ‘God is Love.’ We need to insist, with that repetition which live will show us how to employ, that you cannot sow one thing and reap another no matter how much you may desire to do so, or how good and sincere you may have been or what suffering for yourself or others the reaping will involve. It is still true that if men fall into the fire they will be burned. That we cannot gather grapes off thorns, or figs off thistles. It is in fact just as true as ever it was that lives built on the sands of wrongdoing or wrong thinking or wrong feeling, or upon mere professions of religion, will, when the storms come, fall and perish-fall and perish forever.
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