PUBLIC MEETING OF WELCOME.

Otago Witness, Issue 2667, 26 April 1905, Page 22

PUBLIC MEETING OF WELCOME.

A somewhat frail-looking old man, an old man with a powerful face rendered almost patriarchal by a flowing white beard and a maS3 of white hair, a man whose name is a household word in almost all the nations of the earth, whose powerful personality has marked him out as one of the great men of our time, and whose life work is a legacy of inestimable worth to the world at ! General Booth, the founder and the revered leader of that great organisation the Salvation Army, has for his parish tho wide, wide world, and, as he said himself, he is never at home except he is abroad and is never at rest except he is travelling. Probably^ through near association with him and familiarity with his name, the present generation, attached to him, knowing him, loving him, does not fully realise what a truly great man he is; but in the years and years to come, long after he himself has passed away, his name will be recorded in history -as one of the master minds of this period. That such a man, with such a life work, should be welcome in all parts of his great parish goes without saying, and whether it is in some slum home in the midst of squalor and indescribable filth where he is seeking the rescue of some outcast, or whether it is in audience with one of the great rulers of the earth in an Imperial palace, he is ever the same and ever welcome.

On Thursday night a great audience assembled in the Garrison Hall to accord the General a public welcome, one of those simple, hearty welcomes that the grand old man esteems as reward for work conscientiously performed. The arrival of the General on the platform was greeted with prolonged applause, and he added the finishing touch by coming forward on the platform, his kindly eyes smiling at the sea of faces, and applauding those who were applauding him. The chair was taken by the chief magistrate of the city, the popular Mayor (Mr T. R. Christie), and on his right sat the famous old leader of a deathless Army, and on the left was the head of the Anglican communion in this colony, the Most Rev. the Primate, Dr Nevill, while accompanying them were the Rev. Dr Nisbet (one of the leaders of the Presbyterian Church), the "Very Rev. Dean Fitchett, the Rev. G. Heigh way, the Rev. J. Ward, the Rev. A. Hodge, and the Rev. J. Chisholm, Messrs H. D. Bedford, M.H.R., J. F. Arnold, M.H.R., T. K. Sidey, M.H.R., % Scott, ,and J. Wilkinson, Commissioner M'Kay, Commissioner Nieol, and Colonel Low-ey, of the Army staff.

The first proceeding was the singing of a psalm, led by Commissioner M'Kay,

*" When I survey the wondrous Cross," and then Commissioner Nicol led in prayer. Colonel Xowley was next called upon for a "Salvation hymn," and he sang that grand old song with the chorus " Give them a welcome " in a manner that quickly won the audience.

The Mayor, who was received with applause, briefly addressed those present, and in a few simple, straightforward words tendered the welcome of the citizens of Dunedin to the General, " who had done so muoh for humanity."

The General came forward to the railing, and waited while the great echo of applause resounded through the building. Then he commenced to speak, in a hoarse voice at first, giving no impression of the wonderful power lying beneath, but speedily la\inching into his subject and striding up and down the platform he delivered an impressive speeoh. It was an intensely human address, simple and ,directly pointed, and full of little touches^of humour that would lose by printing, for they required his own inimitable way of delivering them. He was announced to speak on " The Past, Present, and Future of the Salvation Army," and he commenced by saying he thanked his audience from the bottom of his heart for the very kind and cordial greeting, it had been - pleased to tender him, and it was very gratifying and cheering after the lapse of so many years to find that the hearts of his friends here were still towards him, and that they appreciated the work his Army was endeavouring to do. He understood that appreciation as not so much for himself personally but for the great organisation of which he had the honour to be the head. He thought that appreciation was deserved : he thought the Salvation Army had deserved well of the people amongst whom its flag flies. — (Applause.) He much preferred preaching the everlasting Gospel of God to talking about the results of it. Still ho might serve some good purpose, he might be able to bring home to his own people a little more of the practical sympathy which they so much deserved, and which, he was quite sure they so much needed ; he knew the prejudices which still prevailed in so many minds. He then related how a civic dignitary in New York had been asked his real opinion of the Salvation Army, to which he made reply, '' To be frank with you, I don't like it, but I believe God Almighty does." — (Applause.) The General went on to say he knew there were some strange notions existing'about the Army, and not only did these prevail amongst the higher classes of society, but also largely amongst the classes which the Army specially set itself to deliver. He related an incident, told him by one of his officers, about an old woman who had recorded some 70 convictions for drunkenness. She was picked up in the streets one night by the police, and offered the 'choice of going to gaol or to the Salvation Army Home ; she was so drunk she did not really reaSse where she was, but hiccuphed out that she thought she would go to the home. She w&s there washed, her hair cleaned and combed, and she was put into a clean white bed, such as she had not known for many long years. She slept until tho sun was high next day, and then. when she awakened, she looked round in wonder at the elepn, bright room, and asked where she was. An officer told her she was in the Army Home, to which she replied : " Goodness gracious, let mo get out of this or I shall lose my reputation." — (Laughter.) To speak on the past, present, and future of the Salvation Army was a long order; he could very easily see where to begin, but tho difficulty was to know where to leave off. There was to be a collection later, and he inig-ht tire the people before tho=o blessed plates went round. — (Applause.) He would defy any man to say how in any corner of the earth the work of the Army had tended to injure any good work for God or man; on the contrary, he thought the Army might be regarded as the friend >

of all and the enemy of none. — (Applause.) Some people, he fancied, thought sometimes that General Booth was an ambitious man who wanted to create a great following and then float into a position of fame on tho shoulders of his following ; nothing of tho kind, nothing could have been further from his thoughts. The Salvation Army was born, was the evolution, the outgrowth of a simple scheme and desire to benefit those poor lost classes that Church and State so largely neglected. He then spoke of his own life ; his conversion and his devoting his life to God when a wild, mischieyoiis lad; his subsequent career as a minister, and then his appointment to a parish in the East End of London. He spoke of the yearning- he had to carry to all the poor downtrodden people the panacea which had come into his own heart. When he began to preach he preached to those poor people. He made others preach ; he had scarcely been married before his wife began to preach, and three of his 30 grandchildren were preaching, and he meant the other 27 to preach also. — (Applause.) Why should not everyone preach? If a man knew of a great impending disaster, such as a conflagration or tidal wave, he would warn friends and enemies alike to flee from the destruction, and the destruction he (the speaker) warned men to flee from was the wrath of God. In his ministry he knew there was what, for want of a better name, he called a worldly world, but he found there was another world full of wickedness, blasphemy, drunkenness, and cheats, and harlots, and robbers, and murderers, and all sorts of devilish things, and that was the world on which he had set his heart. He wanted to get at it, and waited for months, and waited in vain. He could get to the brim of the great dark ocean and watch its seething tide and its hideous cieatures come and go, but he could not penetrate there until at last the hour struck, and, 39 years ago, by the good providence of God, he was brought to the Eastern end of London, where ho found himself in the midst of misery, vice, and crime. He watched the long processions of all manner of wicked people, and wondered how, how, how he could reach them. At last he saw the door open. He went home to his wife, and told her at last he had found his destiny, and that he gave himself and her and tho children, and all he had and all he could possibly acquire to rescue those people, and his wife rethat these people should be their people, and, as far as they could manage it, their God should be the God of those people. Out of that consultation there grew the Salvation Army. — (Applause.) It was a long uphill work ; a long, long hard task ; he fiad set himself to start an army to make men good, but it was long hard work making the drunkard sober and the harlot chaste. His health broke down, and the doctors gave him up, but they had given him up so often that he had ceased to take any notice. He had been recommended by a celebrated surgeon to take a quiet parish where there was plenty of good fishing and shooting. Well, his parish was the wide, wide world, and he had been catching sharks and whales and all manner of strange monsters. —(Laughter.) Oh, the fishing was indeed plentiful, and there was any amount of shooting, for ho had been trying to shoot the Devil ever since.— (Laughter.) The movement grew and grew ; it went across the Channel to France, into Switzerland, into Italy, Germany (where not so long ago he had addressed a gathering of 6000 people), away up to the Arctic regions, through Java and Japan (where, he believed, a mighty movement would 'follow), into India, into the South Sea Islands, into Lapland, but they wouldn't have the Army in Russia ; Salvationists were warned to keep away from the frontiers of the dominions of the Czar ; but, declared the speaker, "I sliall <?o in yet." — (Prolonged applause.) He had said to himself when he wanted workers, "Where shall I get them? " and then he said. " I know, I shall get them from the drinking saloons ; there is plenty of good material going to waste there."' — (Applause.) And the Army spread and spread, and grew and grew ; it got into South Africa and W>st Africa. Australia and New Zealand, into Canada and th© -United States, from north to south and east to west. — (Applause.) Ho might be asked what good wag it all? He could answer, in the words of lan MacLaren, " I like the Salvation Army because it makes religion whore there was none before." He (the speaker) liked the Salvation Army because it carried religion where there was none before. He believed it to be the best organisation ; if he Uiought there were a. better he would join that, and carry his officers and his army of soldiers, and the "drunks" and the criminal?, the lost and the forsaken, with him. — (Applause.) The Army was not a poaching institution or a " sheep-stealing" institution; it was true it had in its ranks men from all the different churches, but it had paid back the churches richly ; it had given thean back a hundred per cent. There might bs something strange about his religion, but ho didn't think he cared very much about the religion of a man that began and ended with his own soul. — (Applause.) His idea was to greet the low-down, the lost, the helpless, and welcome them, and there was no new fanciful fad about his religion. There was no new Messiah to present to the, curiosity of those strange people who were ever seeking something new in religion, -tlis religion was the genuine old religion of the grand old Bible, tho religion of truth, of the living God, of the evil of sin, of the Judgment Throne, and the everlasting destinies or salvation and hell, and the great sacrifice of the Cross whereby every human soul was purchased. He was a great wanderer, and wa? never at home except he was abroad, and never at rest except he- was in motion. — (Laughter.) Sometimes he was with the poor in their cottages, sometimes he had a look in at White House, sometimes he was invited to open tho Senate of the United States with prayer, and sometimes he had a look in at Buckingham Palace and had a nice little friendly talk with hie Majesty King Edward. — (Applause.) But yet the work was only Just begun. The Army had been occupied in trying to clear the streets of that great City of London of those poor wretches who wandered about night after night hungry and homeless. The Army said, "" If we cannot house them, let us feed them ; if tho

public won't give U3 money to house them, we will feed them in the open air." They were then housing some 3000 or 4000, but there wero thousands outside, and so it was announced that at 2, 3, and 4- o'clock in the morning a basin of hot soup and a good lump of bread would bo given to each homeless man, woman, or child applying for it, and a. long stream, a quarter of a mile long, came, and now tho London County Council had granted room for more shelter. Ho hoped before very long to be ablo to say the streets of London are clear, and that no man or woman nesd walk the streets for want of shelter — (loud applause), — and if the present Government was turned out and found itself homeless — well, it had only to come along three doors to the Army. — (Laughter.) God had made the Army very useful ; it was trying 1 to reach those noor daughters of shame, and during tho last few v-ears it had Been taking out of that "great pit 38,000 girls, and a great majority of them had been restored and a great many more had been prevented from going the same way. — (Applause.) Then there was the following of tho criminals to their haunts and their saloons. ±le belie-ved there was not less than 12,000 drinking saloons in London visited by Army workers every week. The Army flag was flying to-day within 49 different countries, and in these countries the Army was preaching in 32 different languages without translation. There were 7500 separate societies in these countries, and these societies required 14,000 officers, assisted by 50.000 local officers, who were unpaid. The Army had 64 different publications and 24 different newspapers in 37 languages, with an issue of 50 millions a year. Then there were the social operations. There were 265 different institutions in different parts of the world, and something like 200,000 men, women, and children were fed every week ; 20,000 homeless people were sheltered every night ; there were 125 rescue homes for girls, through which the Army passed 6000 girls per annum, 5000 of whom were sent out with every hope of their futurei. Then there were the maternity homes and childre^s homes and inquiry homes, and there were 19 farm colonies ; and he was «til' working and dreaming for the transfer from the- crowded cities of the homeless poor to the open country. The wide, open fields of the earth were crying out for men, and yet over yonder the most valuable asset in creation was left to sran c and was driven to pau2}orism and crime. "Then," said the General, halting in his restless stride* and drawing himself to his full height, " what are you doing, j*ou peo23le? "What sort of i-eligion is yours? Is it beginning and ending with your own eoul? The same responsibility that rests upon me rests iipon you. I passed my seventy-sixth birthday last Monday week ; it's no possible human gain to me to be here. It ha? been a trying and a hard tilKe ; I am seeking the lost sheep. Why should I spend my days and years -seeking the lost? Doe«n't the sanio obligation rest upon you?"' He then related an incident of the great tidal wave disaster at Galveston iv the United State*, when a young girl from one of the homes was found with an infant on eaoh arm and others she' had rescued tied to her body, all dead. The Salvation Army was out on the waters, and its arms were full of sheep, thousands and tens of thousands of sheep, and it wanted to carry them ashore. " Now," said th-e General, " will yem help me, he-lp me in this work, help the Army, and the blessing of God he on you all?" — (Applause.) The Most Rev. the Primate, who received a hearty welcome, then proposed a hearty vote of thanks to. the General for his address. Everyone present at that largei gathering would realise that their thanks were certainly due to the General for hia splendid address. It was of interest alone to have seen one whose name was so well known throughout the world and to have felt tho magnetism of his personality. — (Applause.) The work which General Booth represented was largely known by the people here, not only by what they read, but also by what they had witnessed here, and such work would always call for sympathy and assistance." — .Applause.} Although the cl-urches were doing their utmost to grapple with some of the great problems, yet this gathering together of great^ masses in our cities had been something tnat the churches were not prepared to meet and could not properly grapple with, and Divine Providence had brought into existence an organisation which had for its object the supplementing, at anyrate, of the efforis of tho Christian Churches. lie would like very much indeed that the people could be better acquainted with what had been donei and was being done by the Church he represented. There were an enormous number of works which were carried on by voluntary efforts, and there were millions of pounds a year spent by members of the Anglican communion or. work such as the Ge-neral had been speaking- about. He (the Primato) only told them about this in case it might be thought the churches were asleep. But thero was necessity for something to overtake the great arrears of work, and that something came in the Salvation Army. — (Applause.) He had had an interview with the General — a private interview, — but he could say this much, that the General expressed his oarnest desire not only to promote his great work, but to promote unity and harmony in the Christian Churches themselves and had it not been for the necessity of his great life work he would have liked to have been an apostle of unity throughout the world. — (Applause.) It wa; alr=o mentioned by tho Primate that he was a townsman of General Booth's.

The Rev Dr Nisbet seconded the motion for a vote of thanks, and said he did so with especial pleasure, for ho could say it had been his pleasure during his ministry to do everything in his power to assist this splendid organUaton. and whatever his church might be doing throughout tho world, ho had no hesitation in saying that tho work had been much stimulated since the Army showed tho way to do the work that his church, at anvrate, was utterly failing to do. Ho did not think that any of the churches of tho Old World could pride themselves on what they were doing 30 years ago for tho particular classes to which tho Army had diiccted its attention. — (Applause.) Unity would bo a great deal nearer than it was if the Chjpistiaii chui-ches manifested a little more of tho spirit, which animated tho Salvation Army from its inception. — • (Applause.)

The General briefly returned thanks, anr T the meeting closed with the doxology.