OUR LONDON LETTER by M. Ellsworth Olsen

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 24, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 34.

OUR LONDON LETTER.

By M. Ellsworth Olsen

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON is having fine summer weather—the best that has been known for years. The season is generally considered to have been a remarkably brilliant one, with extravagant dressing, social fetes, and general fashionable dissipation at its highest. Now the time of the midsummer holidays is drawing near. Soon the giddy round of pleasure-seeking will end for the season, the theatres will close up, social functions will cease, and all fashionable London will betake itself to the country or to the various watering places. This almost universal observance of a summer holiday interferes a good deal with the general run of business. Beginning with the first of August, and lasting until near the close of September there is quite general stagnation in the business world of London, owing solely to this cause.

The Salvation Army.

The chief religious event of the past month has been the Great World Congress of the Salvation Army, held in a large temporary building in the Strand, right in the very heart of London, and with auxiliary meetings in a number of the leading halls and theatres, including the reception of the delegates, which took place in the Royal Albert Hall. I attended the first regular meeting of the Congress, at which reports from the various countries of the world were presented by the leading delegates. Every country of importance was represented except Spain and Russia, and there were large contingents from the United States, Canada, and several European countries. The meeting was of a bright and cheery character, the singing excellent, and the whole place seemed alive with enthusiastic sentiment. General Booth presided, and introduced the different delegates, also reading an address which embodied the leading principles of the Army, and a retrospect of its rapid growth, especially the past ten years. About five thousand persons were present, chiefly Army workers, and the effect of singing some of the old melodies was very beautiful.

General Booth's audience with the king was calculated to draw general attention to the Army, and the climax of the Congress was reached in the Grand Review held at the Crystal Palace, in which an army of twenty thousand devoted soldiers passed before the general, while fully a hundred thousand persons were present to witness the sight. The leading journals published full reports of the meetings from day to day, and several noticed them favorably in their editorial columns. The Daily News said:—

"Among those who study the condition of churches and creeds in our day, it is a commonplace that the vast development of the Salvation Army is the one grand and overpowering fact in the contemporary history of Christianity. It weighs in the balance against many disheartening accounts of defection, loss of faith, and spiritual decadence. Its strength lies in the fact that it 'does things;' it does not merely preach them."

The Salvation Army has undergone a certain change of character during the last ten years; its energies have been more and more drawn out in the direction of social and philanthropic enterprises, and it has certainly done much good in this field of effort. On the other hand, it is believed by some of the friends of the movement that it has lost somewhat in spirituality, and in real earnestness in the work of saving souls. However that may be, the work of the Army is probably at its zenith just now, and it is doubtful if another conference of the dimensions and unique interest and enthusiasm of this one will ever be held. Two weaknesses in the Army are worth noting in passing. First, it is to a very great extent, a one-man movement. When General Booth passes off the scene of action, there will be no one to take his place. Secondly, the movement lacks a proper foundation of Scriptural truth. It preaches the gospel of repentance from sin, but fails to lead its disciples into that intimate acquaintance with the Bible which is necessary to fully establish them in the truth. In this respect there is a superficiality about the Army work that its friends can not but deplore. A backward step was taken some years ago when it was decided to admit as members men who were addicted to the tobacco habit. Such can not, however, become officers till they give up the weed. Vegetarian principles are making considerable progress in the Army, many of the leading officers, including General Booth and his son Bramwell Booth, being strict abstainers from flesh foods. Certainly the Army has done one very great kindness to the Christian world in showing the capacity of ordinary men and women for fruitful service in behalf of their fellow-men.

Religious Indifference.

"Pagan London" was the title of a recent article by a Church-of-England clergyman in one of the leading dailies. In it was pointed out the fact that church-going was never so much at a discount as at the present, and that the general attitude of the public was one of religious indifference. Marie Corelli, the novelist, resented the charges, and wrote a reply entitled "Unchristian Clerics," in which she suggested that a church which paid its head seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and the holders of other rich benefices proportionally, was not the kind of a church to help the toiling masses. It must be admitted that the novelist's point of view is shared by a very large number of the working class.

Precarious Peace.

We had a demonstration last evening of how quickly the war spirit is stirred up. Russia seized the "Malacca," a steamship carrying military stores, etc., for the English at Hong Kong. Britain demanded that the vessel be released, and the report came out that Russia had refused. So the evening papers put out flaming contents-bills after this style: "Britain firm; Russia defiant. Warships move." There was quite a stir, but this morning the papers report that Russia is quite disposed to yield. So the incident is closed. But it plainly illustrates how precarious is the peace that exists in Europe to-day. Here in England the feeling of distrust toward Germany is growing. Some believe that Germany will yet interfere to aid Russia in the war with Japan, which would mean that England would be called upon to help her ally.

The death of Mr. G. F. Watts, the celebrated painter, has removed from our midst a man of strong character, and one who saw much more clearly than most men the evils from which the country is suffering. He led a simple, abstemious life, working to the last. Tho never in very robust health, he died at the ripe age of eighty-seven.

Ritualism, or the Movement Romeward

is rampant; it grows in strength continually, and becomes more bold and wanton in its assumptions of Romish ways. The vicar of a certain parish writes in the Parish Magazine: "The chief disappointment this Lent has been the smallness of the number of those who have attended daily Mass." Following is an extract from his monthly letter: "It is necessary to say a word about each person's keeping to his own proper turn in coming to Confession. . . . Complaints reach me that it is by no means an uncommon thing for people to come into church for the purpose of making their confession, find a number of people already there waiting, and yet make their way right to the front, and take almost the next opportunity to go into the confessional," etc., etc. Is it not disgusting to think that in a supposedly Protestant church the members will rush in head over heels to confess their sins to a Romanizing cleric? And yet this is only a typical case. The country is full of it, and the movement

has its sympathizers amongst those in high authority in church and state.

Temperance and Hygiene in the Schools.

I have referred in previous letters to the prevalence of intemperance, and, as one of the consequences, a very manifest deterioration in the national health and physique. This matter is receiving some much-needed attention. For some months past a petition has been circulating amongst the medical men, which calls for the teaching of hygiene and temperance in the public schools of the country. This petition, after receiving about 17,000 signatures, was last week formally presented to the Minister of Education by a committee of medical men. The comments of the London Times on this matter are so apposite that I quote them nearly in full. The great journal says:—

"This is the year 1904 of the Christian era, and this is a country which prides itself upon being in the forefront of civilization, and piques itself upon its common sense, and its practical intelligence. . . . [It] has tens of thousands of ministers of religion, who are supposed to assist in making men and women good citizens. It has a very large body of medical men, each of whom ought surely to be a center of intelligence as regards the elementary laws of health. It is covered with all sorts of benevolent agencies for dealing with isolated aspects of disease or accident. It has universities, public schools, secondary schools, and a costly system of compulsory education.

"Yet in this favored land a deputation of medical men, last week, waited upon the Minister of Education to beg him, in view of the appalling and increasing degeneration among the people to take steps to have the rudimentary laws of health taught in the public schools. The minister expressed his entire sympathy with the objects of the deputation, but was obliged to confess that he could not promise any immediate help, because his department does not possess teachers who themselves know what the deputation desire to have taught. His department is doing what it can to induce the existing teachers to learn, and two years hence it hopes that every teacher admitted to its staff will be adequately instructed.

"So that in about a generation it may be possible that the fathers and the mothers of the next will learn at school a little of what it most nearly concerns them to know. It would need the pen of a Swift to do justice to this mordant satire upon the way in which this nation carries on the highly important business of training its men and women."

Such words mean much coming from Great Britain's foremost daily. They show that the nation is awakening to some of its greatest needs, and that the way is open as never before to carry forward our health work.

M. ELLSWORTH OLSEN. London, July 22, 1904.