Part 5

I have as good as said that what makes the outer strength of the Salvationists is their realization of Jesus as liver and lover. Love, yearning love, is undoubtedly the chief characteristic of Jesus. But, just as the sun gives forth not only heat but light, so did he. His life was love: his death was peace. “_My peace I leave with you._” And it is just here, just in their realization of “the mildness and sweet reasonableness” of Jesus that the Salvationists are apt to be lacking: and it is just here that the Church of England more than any other Christian sect is, as it seems to me, so strong. The _Hymns Ancient and Modern_ are, on the whole, the best song-book extant of this “mildness and sweet reasonableness.” We must not, however, think that this demand for the peace as well as the love of Jesus is not recognised by the Salvationists: it is, but I cannot think that it is recognised adequately. As soon as a man is “saved” and has “professed,” there are open to him, what they call, the Holiness Meetings. These are the answer to the demand for peace. But they differ only particularly from the other meetings. They are smaller, and hence quieter, than the others; but there is, so to speak, too much heat and too little light in them. Here is the weak point in the Salvationist movement, just as it is the strong point in (I always take the best example our Christianity can give us) the Church of England. Here it is the turn of the Salvationists to be not masters, but pupils. Let us hope that they will see this, and not only teach, but also (which is so much more difficult) be ready to learn from, us.

VI.

There are still two parts of the work of the Salvationists to consider—their work with the inmates of the prisons, and their work with the inmates of the brothels. Here again we have everything to learn from them, from them the true disciples of “the divine Communist.” The former work they have made a speciality of, and they are rapidly making the latter. I doubt very much that our churches and chapels (I am not speaking now of the Catholics, whose work is almost exclusively among the Irish, and the Irish are of a race that, save in the matter of agrarian crime and a curious cruelty to dumb animals, is truly admirable for the honesty of its men and the chastity of its women): I doubt very much, I say, that our churches and chapels will ever get much at either the criminals or the prostitutes. Our clergymen, who are so gentlemanly, and our ministers who are so respectable, can neither speak nor understand much the language of the People, the language of the heart. The clergymen are shocked by the foulness, the ministers by the ferocity, of the People. Both feel that they are condescending—the one from the height of refinement, the other from the height of righteousness. The people has no love for condescension of this sort. There are few words that stink more in its nostrils than that of charity, and indeed charity, when it means a gift from a superior to an inferior, is hateful enough. It is a popular delusion with the “charitable” that street beggars and the inmates of the workhouses are the People. Far otherwise is it, O “charitable” ones: these are not independent animals, they are parasites: they are (if you will pardon me saying so) your spiritual lice; so please make the best of them, since it is not only on account of, but _on_, you that they live.

Well, now, wherein is it that these fanatical ignorant Salvationists _do_ get at the People? One of them answers us at once: “_No one’s too wicked for Jesus, and so no one’s too wicked for me who am the simple follower of Jesus._ If _he_ could do with publicans and harlots, why cannot I?” They say, as Walt Whitman says to “a common prostitute,”

“Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you, Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.”

This, you see, is Religious Socialism. It proclaims the spiritual equality of all men. The _spiritual_ equality, let us notice; it will have nothing to do with the social equality. “_My kingdom is not of this world.... Give unto Cæsar the things which be Cæsar’s, and to God the things which be God’s._” “Honour all men,” says Peter, “love the brotherhood, fear God, honour the king.” And more: Religious Socialism has a tendency to be careless of the dogmas of the creeds. “Is the Army hostile,” asks Mr. Booth, “to the existing evangelical denominations? Just the contrary. Numbers of its converts go to swell the membership of the churches. More than 400 persons, converted and trained in its ranks, have been engaged by other different religious organisations as Evangelists, Ministers,” etc., etc., etc. We notice that he says “_evangelical_ denominations?” The Catholics, of course, from (who shall I say?) Augustine to Pascal and Newman, are poor belated idolaters, only slightly better than the heathen. This, you see, is where Mr. Booth, like Mr. Spurgeon and the rest, so pleasantly shows us what nonsense an earnest short-sighted man is capable of believing and brandishing about the world with a godless blatancy. Personally, I cannot make myself angry with any of them for it. For what would an earnest man be without his faults? without, as D’Israeli puts it, a single redeeming vice?

In Melbourne there is a tendency now to let the Salvation Army have its own way unmolested with the criminals and the prostitutes. “It can’t do any harm,” people say, “and it may do good, and really, you know, the—the Social Evil wants looking to.” Nay, more: having made this nice expression “Social Evil,” we are at last plucking up courage to acknowledge that it exists, and that it is not necessarily a sign of filthy-mindedness to wish to discuss it. We speak of it now in papers which come under the eye of those dear creatures about whose stainless purity of mind we are all so anxious (even that Puritanic print, the _Melbourne Bulletin_ is anxious, and the _Sydney Bulletin_, also, for all I know to the contrary)—“our wives and daughters.” Why, possibly there are those among us who will live to see the day when the expression “fearful sinner,” as applied to some poor girl driven out into the miseries of the streets, will be confined to the utterance of our good friends of the Scotch Presbytery, and other few such like. Then, it will be amusing: at present, it is only detestable.

VII.

Now let us go to the Barracks of the Prison Brigade, and see what has to be seen there. The officials (all, I believe, old criminals) and the men that they have just got hold of, are gathered for a sort of home service. Man after man, boy after boy, rises to give his “experience.” The “experiences” can be pretty easily imagined. Then there are hymns, choruses, addresses by the higher officials present. All, or almost all here, there is no doubt of it, are “terribly in earnest.” The interruptions, “Hallelujah,” “Praise God,” and so on, are all earnest. One boy with a maimed face gets up and says: “I was miserable in the streets, I’m very happy now. God bless the Major,” and sits down again. For me, I confess that, over and over again, I have not known whether to answer the word and acts of these men, or shall I say children, with smiles or tears. Now and then I have answered them with both.

Afterwards we are shown the bedrooms, observing that we do not want to see them. I have seen many bedrooms that were delightful, and many keepers thereof whose hearts were as clean and hard as the floors. Also I have seen bedrooms that were poor and crowded, and the keepers thereof whose hearts were as rich as love and as soft as pity. I prefer the latter, myself, if I must choose between them, but tastes of course are different. Then the boy with the maimed face is brought in, to tell his tale and show his wounded leg. The People like you to look at their wounds and sores and casualties generally. It is painful. It is like the young ladies of the Middle-class who like you to look at their drawings and paintings, or listen to their playing and singing. I do not know which habit is the more painful of the two—perhaps, on the whole, the latter. The first only hurts my senses: the second hurts my soul. It makes me lose hope in my ideas for the future of the Middle-class: it makes me think it is doomed to the hideousness of clap-trap for ever. It is like a visit to the sculpture at the Melbourne Public Library.

They show us the rooms and bring us the boy, you notice, in that practical English spirit which is intent on making it clear that their cry is proportionate to their wool, a fact of which we are not altogether ignorant. Hence our carelessness about more than a glance at the rooms, or a short talk with the boy with the maimed face. I think I could tell him as much about himself as he can tell me. I have known him many times before.

It is pleasing to notice here how much they insist on the new life, how comparatively little stress they lay on the “conversion,” on the being “saved.” Also, that the Salvationists know how to laugh. It is only men who keep their religion for a fine heavy diet on sunday who cannot pray at one moment and laugh at another. If my religion is a part of _me_, it is also clearly a part of my laughter.

Now let us go the rounds of the opium dens and brothels round about Little Bourke Street. We walk, my Salvationist and I, into any house that we wish. No one opposes us: only once in the whole evening are we spoken to other than respectfully. “_You see_,” says the mistress of the most facially contorted Chinee I have yet seen, “_You see, the Salvationists helps the girls, that’s why we likes ’em!_” Here we are in a den, a girl lying on one side of the bed (the Chinese beds are like large alcoves. In the middle is the opium-tray, containing the pipe, a lamp, etc.), a Chinee on the other, getting her pipe ready for her. We sit and chat with her. She tells us about herself simply enough, showing no signs of wishing to alter her condition. Then the other girl comes in, and we chat with her. My Salvationist recognises her: she was at Bella’s funeral. (Bella was a girl who fell down dead in the brothel opposite, and the Army buried her. All “the girls” about clubbed together, hired cabs, and went to the funeral.) “O yes,” says the girl to him, “you said the service for Bella.” She too tells us about herself simply enough. Her mother is at Ballarat.—“Does she know you’re here?”—“O yes, she knows.”—“Does she think you’re in service?”—“O no, _she_ knows what I’m doing;” and so on. Presently I go into the other room and talk pigeon English with the remarkable spectacled Chinee, who is like a venerable old ape. Why will the English girls come and live with the Chinese? The answer is simple: the Chinese both pay them well and are kind to them. These girls are not bruised on the face and arms as most of the others are.

You perceive now how the Salvationists work here? They are the “friends” of the girls: they “help” them. Find out from a girl if she is miserable: find out if she would sooner go back to a respectable life. Go everywhere fearlessly: Find out if any girl is being detained against her wishes. Be gentle with them as with equals. Make them feel that you care for them for their own sakes. Work upon their feelings—speak of their home, their mother, their father, their brothers, their sisters. Offer them a new start. Then, the moment that of their own free will they are ready to come, put them into a cab and drive straight away with them to the Home. Here they come under the influence of the women officials of the Army, (some of whom, however, also do visiting work), the same system being pursued with them as with the men. They are not made to feel that they are dealing with people more loftily refined or more loftily righteous than themselves. They are not made to feel that they are “fearful sinners.” They are made to feel that sin is fearful and that they have sinned fearfully, but that they have every hope before them, hope of a new life before God and man. As for the women officials of the Salvation Army, I will say this, that in no body of female religionists, except the Catholic Sisters, have I found so many sweet true women. I have also known Anglican Sisters who were well worthy of a place beside them. Such women are the essence of Christianity. They are the true children of Mary Magdalene and Monica, of the love and of the affection of the soul. Preference for any one of these three classes, there can be none. I cannot exalt true love above true affection any more than I can exalt heat above light: their joy is equal. But in one respect the Salvationist women have an advantage over the others, just as the Salvationist men have over the celibate priests—in just that, in the fact that they need not be celibates. Many of these Salvationist girls and women are the sweethearts or wives of their fellow-workers. This, I think, is as it should be. He who neglects or despises that great law of Nature and God, passion, will be assuredly punished for it. To make a large body of men and women celibates is to put a premium on immorality and hypocrisy. This great rock the Salvation Army has avoided, and herein it has done most wisely. Here, where Rome is weak, it is strong. We must not, however, think that there is nothing to be said in behalf of celibacy: there is much, very much. If we were all men like Francis of Assissi or Vincent de Paul, it would be perfect; but unfortunately we are not. At the same time, he who has seen the work of Catholic priests and of Protestant clergymen or ministers in times of plague and pest must feel how great a clog to perfect courage are those hostages a man has given to fate in wife and children. On the other hand, observe that times of pest and plague are comparatively rare, and that every great idea when put into practice is but a mixed good. What we have to do is to choose that which has least evil, or shall we say most good, and this can, we feel sure, be only chosen in conformity with all of those few great primeval laws which are the guides of life, which are the direct words of Nature and of God.

VIII.

So much, then, for the _how_ of the Salvation Army. Let us now consider if it has helped us to the _why_—nay, if it has not absolutely told us the _why_! Did we not instinctively catch at something we saw two or three times rising before us as with small but teleological significance in it? Did we not feel, as we uttered that expression with which this something inspired us, that here was the _why_ in propria persona? _Religious Socialism._

In this state of affairs—the powerlessness of the Socialists to bring home to the People the great idea of social improvement: in the misery unspeakable of the People; in the atmosphere heavy with the degradation of the People—what is it that the People has done? _It has evolved a movement_, _no longer from_ without, _but from_ within _itself_. _It has sought for consolation for its unspeakable wretchedness in the perennial spring of Religion, of the yearning love of Jesus. It has, at the touch of the first match that came to it, blazed up into the flaming fire of Religious Socialism._

In the early part of the thirteenth century the People did the same, the People of Italy. But what a heaven lies between the man who led _that_ movement and the man that is leading this! O my eloquent Rationalists, O my loquacious Secularists, both of you whom I esteem so much—how ready are you to talk of the degradation which that gigantic superstition and delusion, Christianity, wrought upon the People! Whenever are you tired of brandishing “starry Galileo” and scattering the scattered dust of poor old Copernicus in the face of Catholicism, making it to tremble and sneeze fearfully? Does it never occur to you that that divine Goddess Scientia, whom you worship with such noble devotion, has wrought a far deeper degradation on the people than Catholicism ever did? Have you never seen, crouching under the shadow of your railways and your telegraphs and all your improved machinery, the unspeakable wretchedness of London, of Birmingham, of Manchester, of Glasgow? And now that this People, whose lives your Goddess has made of such a sort that they will not stand too favourable a comparison with those of dogs—now that this People, in its passionate searching after some consolation, however slight, of whatever sort, seizes on this creature of superstition and delusion, this Jesus who is _only a man, just like you or me_, and whom you have so triumphantly proved so, and makes him the text for this flaming fire of Religious Socialism—has it never struck you, O my eloquent Rationalists, O my loquacious Secularists, what an appalling difference there is between Salvation Army banners, handkerchiefs, brass-bands, and concertinas, and the “green boughs, flags, music, and songs of gladness” that came forth from the Umbrian towns and villages to welcome Francis of Assissi? have you never felt that there is any essential difference between the perpetual Revivalist hymn of “My Jesus to know and to feel his blood flow,” and the “Canticle of the Creatures?” But, above all, have you never felt that it is more to that divine Goddess Scientia, whom you worship with such noble devotion, than to anything else that this appalling difference is due?

And you, O my Middle-class, of whom I am so humble a unit, did it ever occur to you that it is rather a foolish thing to paint a boy’s face black and then be shocked at it? If the People, its foulness and its ferocity, makes you shiver and shudder, who pray made it foul and fierce but you who govern it?—What do you say? “It was no business of yours?” That was what Cain said, but respectable Christians like you are not surely going to take that eminent casuist as your mouth-piece? If you were Atheists or Agnostics, now, worshippers of “the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest,” of course that would be another matter, but you are Christians, respectable Christians who always wear black coats on Sundays, and object to having the Library and Picture-Gallery open.

Well, there! I cannot make myself angry with you, my dear Middle-class. I admire your good qualities too much for that—too much indeed, as I often tell myself; for who shall say but that my belief in your ultimate regeneration and new birth unto a really glorious place in a true civilization be not, after all, but infatuation? Here is Carlyle, whom we all love and admire so, trying to be our benefactor by demonstrating to us our illusions on this matter, and telling us, ever since 1830, of the “steady approach of democracy with revolution (probably explosive) and a finis incomputable to man; steady decay of all morality, political, social, individual; this once noble England getting more and more ignoble, and untrue in every fibre of it, till the gold (Goethe’s composite king) will all be eaten out, and noble England will have to collapse in shapeless ruin, whether for ever or not none of us can know.” Really there are hours when I am made quite to suffer by thinking of what is going to happen to my dear Middle-class when the People rise unanimously against it,—“roaring million-headed unreflecting, darkly suffering, darkly sinning ‘Demos’” (as Carlyle says again), “come to call its old superiors to account at its maddest of tribunals.” It will, I fear, be little good for the Mr. Caffyns of those times to write letters to the _Argus_ of those times, explaining the physiological aspects of the movement. On such an occasion in Paris, in 1793, Mr. Caffyns went up into the arms of La Guillotine for much less heinous offences than that, and who would be left capable of recording whether, in this case, they went up “with a tripping movement” (as Mr. Caffyn tells us the fanatical “Hallelujah lasses” go), or whether they marched, as perhaps Mr. Caffyn himself marches to church or chapel every Sunday morning, to the edification of all beholders? But let us not think of such an appalling spectacle. Mr. Caffyn is still with us, and the _Argus_ is still with us, and perhaps some morning we shall have some more brilliant letters on the physiological aspects of Mr. Caffyn’s friends, the hallelujah lasses.

I cannot, I say, make myself angry with you, my dear Middle-class of England (and you might plausibly suggest that it would not matter much if I did), and how then shall I even frown at this Middle-class of Victoria, about whom (if Carlyle is right) I am more infatuate still? Does not the People breathe free in Australia? Are we not liberated here from that charming “Upper Ten Thousand” which monopolises the best of the bad education England has to offer, the Public Schools and the Universities? Is there not a hope that, now that the primary education of the People is progressing so satisfactorily, some of our young rising politicians, (or even some of the old ones), may bring home to us the fact that we want equally—nay, far more!—a secondary education for the Middle-class? so that Victoria may step forward as a competitor with the most universally civilized nation in the world, France, and teach England the unspeakable glory and advantage of (we should call it) an Upper-class, “homogeneous, intelligent, civilized, brought up in good public schools” (and not, as now, in more or less good, or more or less bad, denominational, and “private adventure” schools) “and on the first plane.”

If only this Upper-class of Victoria and of Australia generally could be brought to see it! If only it would confess its sins, many and heinous, against true civilization and be “converted” and lead a new life! Nothing, I think, strikes an Englishman more, coming out here, than the brightness and intelligence of the Victorian girls! (“Our daughters,” you know.) And how heart-rending to discover that all this brightness and intelligence is wasted on the mere accidents and incidents of every-day existence! Two-shilling novels are her idea of literature: “Some day” and “Ehren on the Rhine” her idea of music: the coloured illustrations of the illustrated papers, her idea of art. And her brother is in a worse state! The tortoise English girl is, after all, better than the Australian hare, and the young male bull-dog than the kangaroo.

Everything cries out for the education, for the civilization, of the Upper-class, the ruling class. Educate it, civilize it, let it know what Truth is and what Beauty is, and abolish the bells and the brass-bands for ever! If the Upper-class is beautiful, its beauty will react on the Lower-class. Give us public schools for the Upper-class, as there are public schools for the Lower-class. Fight tooth and nail against any attempts after an “Upper Ten Thousand,” whether it be of land or of wealth. Keep clearly before us the ideal of an Upper-class that is _homogeneous_. Let us have the man of business as cultured as the professional man, and the professional man as cultured as the man of means. Let us be a true Republic, offering every opportunity to the intelligence of the Lower-class to attain to the culture of the Upper. Let us not have ten thousand aristocrats, but ten hundred thousand, ever more and more, and never less and less! On the other hand, let us learn from the People the great lesson which they have to teach us—the lesson of the language of the heart. Let us learn from them the softness of pity, yea and the richness of love. Let us give them our _Social Socialism_ and let us take their _Religious_; for, in the perfect marriage of light and heat, is the perfect day, the true civilization, the beauty of the truth of Nature and of God.

_February, 1885._

SYDNEY AND HER CIVILIZATION, AS THEY STRIKE AN ENGLISHMAN.