'
This reply may cause some to smile, but I confess I find such
childlike faith touching and even beautiful.
There is small doubt that consciously or unconsciously, the Salvation
Army has followed St. Paul's example of being all things to all men,
if 'by all means' it may save some. This is the reason of its methods
which to many seem so vulgar and offensive. Once I spoke to an Officer
high up in the Army of this matter, instancing, amongst other things,
its brass bands and loud-voiced preaching at street corners.
'My dear sir,' he replied, 'if we came to convert _you_, we should not
bring a brass band or send a missionary who shouted out sacred names
every minute. Possibly, if we thought that you were open to the
influences of music, we might send a first-rate violinist to play
pieces from the classical masters, and we should certainly send a man
whom we knew to be your intellectual equal, and who could therefore
appeal to your reason. But our mission at present is not so much to
you and your class, as to the dregs of humanity. The folk we deal with
live in a state of noise of which you have no conception, and if we
want to force them to listen to us, we must begin by making a greater
noise in order to attract their attention at all.
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