Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1934. THE SALVATION ARMY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 54, Issue 97, 3 February 1934, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1934. THE SALVATION ARMY.

Celebration of the jubilee of the establishment of the Salvation Army in Ashburton marks an occasion on which all classes and all creeds wholeheartedly unite in offering congratulations on past achievement and good wishes for future successes. Work far beyond the wildest dreams of the founder and beyond the comprehension of all but a few who have exceptional opportunities for examination has been accomplished since that fateful Sunday—July 5, 1865 —on which William Booth gave his first open-air address at Mile End Waste, East London. The international scope of the movement that developed from the "mission" was well typified by the fact that Booth came of a Church of England family, became a Wesleyan Methodist minister and was led to his epoch-making decision through the influence of an open-air missioner from the United States. Happy has been the outcome of his conviction "that the masses could be reached only by reaching out to them and never, never saved by waiting for them to come to us"—to give M. B. Booth's own words in "Beneath Two Flags." The Army has earned gratitude and respect for its spiritual work, but no less so for its social work. As the Salvation Army Year Book of 1913 put it: "In the beginning it was to save souls from Hell that the General started his campaign, and ere long both he and his workers saw that many souls could not be saved unless their temporal needs were also regarded. . . . The social work is the daughter of the spiritual —the beautiful offspring of a worthy mother. Well and truly did they labour of whom Commissioner Railton spoke in 1893: "Men and women who gladly bore contempt, abuse, poverty and suffering of every kind that they might spend a part of the life which still remained to them in proclaiming their Saviour." The recalling of the "days of persecution" and of the "days of misrepresentation" that followed, serves but to emphasise the appreciation that is expressed in these days. In Ashburton, fortunately, the Army has not been called upon to discharge its social functions to the utmost, but it nevertheless has played its full part in assisting the needy, comforting the distressed and reclaiming the erring. It has in no small degree helped to develop a community of high moral and religious calibre. For this it deserves, and receives, the sincere thanks and warmest regard of all residents of the County. In the more extended sphere, by its world-wide humanitarian activitiesusing that phrase in its widest and deepest sense—it has gained the appreciation of millions who recognise true worth.