is in its total dissociation from
church or sect. However good the work which is done by the Church and by
the more widely ramified agency of the Non-conformist sects--and no one
will be found to deny that this work is of the greatest possible value
in relieving the destitute and reclaiming the criminal classes--there is
little or no unity about it. It is under no individual control, it is
not carried out on any uniform system, and one agency has no means of
knowing what another agency is doing. The result is that relief gets
very unevenly distributed, and the lazy and dissolute profit at the
expense of the deserving poor. Nor do any of these agencies, as a
general rule, aim at any systematic crusade against other destitution
than that of the moment. When they touch the lowest of low-life deeps;
it is for the most part in the way of temporary relief only, without the
effort (because they have not power) to set these people on their feet
again and give them the means of earning a living. It is here that
General Booth steps in, and by an elaborate but perfectly feasible
system, proposes without any attempt at proselytization to drag the poor
from their poverty, put them in the way of doing work of any kind they
may be fitted for, and eventually establish them in an over-sea colony.

Looking now to the objections which may be urged against General Booth's
scheme, we are at once confronted by two important considerations. The
first concerns the "General" himself. He asks for a million pounds
sterling to enable him to carry out his project, and the question seems
to have already been asked, Is he the person to whom a million pounds
may be entrusted? Will it be so safeguarded that those who subscribe may
feel assured that the money will be properly applied and an honest
attempt made to do the work here planned out? To all these questions we
are disposed to reply in the affirmative. General Booth and his
Salvation Army have by this time pretty well weathered the storm of
abuse and scorn with which their methods were at first received, and
however much we may be disposed even now to question the taste or
propriety of those methods, there can be no amount of doubt in the mind
of any reasonable man that the Salvation Army has been the means of
achieving enormous good the whole world over. In his administration of
this huge organization of which himself was the founder, Mr. Booth has
proved himself a man of probity and of the stric