IN DARKEST ENGLAND and THE WAY OUT
by GENERAL BOOTH
(this Etext comes from the 1890 1st ed. pub. The Salvation Army)
To the memory of the companion, counsellor, and comrade of nearly 40 years. The sharer of my every ambition for the welfare of mankind, my loving, faithful, and devoted wife this book is dedicated.
The progress of The Salvation Army in its work amongst the poor andlost of many lands has compelled me to face the problems which an moreor less hopefully considered in the following pages. The grimnecessities of a huge Campaign carried on for many years against theevils which lie at the root of all the miseries of modern life,attacked in a thousand and one forms by a thousand and one lieutenants,have led me step by step to contemplate as a possible solution of atleast some of those problems the Scheme of social Selection andSalvation which I have here set forth.
When but a mere child the degradation and helpless misery of the poorStockingers of my native town, wandering gaunt and hunger-strickenthrough the streets droning out their melancholy ditties, crowding theUnion or toiling like galley slaves on relief works for a baresubsistence kindled in my heart yearnings to help the poor which havecontinued to this day and which have had a powerful influence on mywhole life. A last I may be going to see my longings to help theworkless realised. I think I am.
The commiseration then awakened by the misery of this class has been animpelling force which has never ceased to make itself felt during fortyyears of active service in the salvation of men. During this time I amthankful that I have been able, by the good hand of God upon me, to dosomething in mitigation of the miseries of this class, and to bring notonly heavenly hopes and earthly gladness to the hearts of multitudes ofthese wretched crowds, but also many material blessings, including suchcommonplace things as food, raiment, home, and work, the parent of somany other temporal benefits. And thus many poor creatures have provedGodliness to be "profitable unto all things, having the promise of thelife that now is as well as of that which is to come."
These results have been mainly attained by spiritual means. I haveboldly asserted that whatever his peculiar character or circumstancesmight be, if the prodigal would come home to his Heavenly Father, hewould find enough and to spare in the Father's house to supply all hisneed both for this world and the next; and I have known thousands nay,I can say tens of thousands, who have literally proved this to be true,having, with little or no temporal assistance, come out of the darkestdepths of destitution, vice and crime, to be happy and honest citizensand true sons and servants of God.
And yet all the way through my career I have keenly felt the remedialmeasures usually enunciated in Christian programmes and ordinarilyemployed by Christian philanthropy to be lamentably inadequate for anyeffectual dealing with the despairing miseries of these outcastclasses. The rescued are appallingly few—a ghastly minority comparedwith the multitudes who struggle and sink in the open-mouthed abyss.Alike, therefore, my humanity and my Christianity, if I may speak ofthem in any way as separate one from the other, have cried out for somemore comprehensive method of reaching and saving the perishing crowds.
No doubt it is good for men to climb unaided out of the whirlpool on tothe rock of deliverance in the very presence of the temptations whichhave hitherto