A PRECEDENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 21, 20 February 1891, Page 17

A PRECEDENT.

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HE stir that is just now being made about General Booth's famous proposals inclines us to inquire also into the nature of the religious movement of which the General is the leader and autocrat. , We have said, in a former article, that, as a social reformer, we believe the General to be a man of exceptional talent, and that we should be willing to see him given the facilities he asks for bringing about an improvement in the deplorable condition of the English masses. We have also said that with the General, in his character as a religious teacher, we have nothing to do, and that we have no expectation that the work done by him in this respect will be of a lasting kind. It is not, in fact, the first time that an extravagant revival of religion took place in hngland, of which great things were, on the one hand, expected with joy, and on the other deplorable consequences were feared. Ihe Methodist movement, at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, almost surpassed in extravagance the doings of the Salvation Army, and made its way in, not only among the outcasts of society, but among the ranks of respectable people, and even into the Army and Navy. It was represented, too, by periodicals having a circulation of some eighteen or twenty thousand a month — which, the difference in the times being allowed for, does not fall so very far short of that of the War Cry now issued by the Army. If these periodicals, moreover, failed to equal the War Cry in what sometimes reads to the unconverted very like open blasphemy, they seem to have exceeded it in credulity and superstition! We find, for instance, cases in which miraculous intervention took place, sometimes exercised by way of vengeance and sometimes by way of mercy, frequently reported. A clergyman, for example, is described as struck dead for playing cards ; a youth is stung by a bee on the tip of his tongue for cursing ; an innkeeper is destroyed for appointing a cockfight to be held at the hour the Methodist meeting began ; a dancing-master meets his fate for irreligion, and so on. On the other hand, a man with scrofulous legs and atheistical principles is suddenly cured of both during a sermon. Visions and revelations are commonly reported. Preservation in material danger, again, attends on fidelity to conversion. We are, for example, given the case of a number of sailors on board Lord Nelson* ship : " The dogs were the best seamen on board. Every man kruw his duty and every man liul his duty. They used to meet together and sing hymns ; and nobody dared molest them. The commander would not have suffered it had they attempted it. ... Not one of them was either killed or wounded at the battle of Trafalgar, though they did their duty as well as any men. No. not one of the psalm-singing gentry was even huit." — Of the fierce possession Methodist principles took of those who accepted them, we are given an instance in the case of a young fellow who, having come under powerful convictions ot his miserable condition as a sinner, fell into such a btate of penitence for one particular offence that he lost his life through it. " His nervous system had received such a shock that his recovery was doubtful ; and it seemed certain that if he did recover he would sink into a state of idiocy." He did not recover, however, but died in a few days. Well might more sober-minded people inquire what was to come of all this. "To what degree will Methodism extend in this country ? " inquires a writer in January, 1808. " Ihis question it is not easy to answer, lhat il has rapidly increased within these few years we have no manner of doubt and we confess we cannot see what is likely to impede its progress. The party which it has formed in the Legislature und the artful neutrality with which they give respectability to their bmall number, The talents of some of this part), and the unimpeached excellence ot their characters, all "make ■f probable that fanaticism will increase rather than diminish. The Methodists have made an alarming inroad into the Church, and they arc utacking the Army and Navy. The principality ot Wales and the Last India Company they have already acqu rtd. All mines and subterraneous place's belong to them ; they creep into hospitals and small Bchools

and so work their way upwards." Methodism, however, did not come to anything very formidable after all. The Wesleyans settled down into an orderly and respectable sect. The Ranters, we may probably conclude, have made way for the Salvation Army. They, at least, have not so satisfied the religious wants of th<» lower mas«es as to Iphvp nothing more to be done there. On the contrary, almost everything seems still undone among thoso masses so far as religion is concerned. What assurance have we that some seventy or eighty years hence some other religious movement may not be needed to replace that of the Salvation Army, which will have followed the path oi dissolution and division common to all the sects ? In one important particular, however, the Methodist revival differed from that of the Salvation Army. " The Methodists hate pleasure and amusements ; no theatre, no cards, no dancing, no punchinello, no dancing-dogs, no blind fiddlers ; — all the amusements of the rich and of the poor must disappear wherever these gloomy people get a footing." Amusements — amusements of a peculiar kind, no doubt, but still amusements, form the very life of the Salvation Army. But let us judge as to whether the Spirit of God is to be found more in the thump of the drum or the clatter of the tambourine than in the " ennui, wretchedness, melancholy, groans, and sighs," which we are told were the offerings made to Heaven by the Methodists. Of the two, perhaps the fervour of the Army may prove the more evanescent. In all probability the settlement of the unfortunate people r> scued from the slums in comfortable homes may take away from them the craving for excitement, in which now a great part of their religion seems to exist. General Booth's plan, in fact, for the social amelioration of his followers may probably, if successful, prove the destruction of his particular system of religion. All we should eventually have in the colonies, arising from the Salvation Army settlements, would most probably be a few more orderly and respectable sects, to add to those already among us.