In Darkest England and The Way Out | Page 3

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IN DARKEST ENGLAND and THE WAY OUT
by GENERAL BOOTH
(this Etext comes from the 1890 1st ed. pub. The Salvation Army)
To the memory of the companion, counsellor, and comrade of nearly 40
years. The sharer of my every ambition for the welfare of mankind, my
loving, faithful, and devoted wife this book is dedicated.
PREFACE
The progress of The Salvation Army in its work amongst the poor and
lost of many lands has compelled me to face the problems which an
more or less hopefully considered in the following pages. The grim
necessities of a huge Campaign carried on for many years against the
evils which lie at the root of all the miseries of modern life, attacked in
a thousand and one forms by a thousand and one lieutenants, have led
me step by step to contemplate as a possible solution of at least some of
those problems the Scheme of social Selection and Salvation which I
have here set forth.
When but a mere child the degradation and helpless misery of the poor
Stockingers of my native town, wandering gaunt and hunger-stricken
through the streets droning out their melancholy ditties, crowding the
Union or toiling like galley slaves on relief works for a bare subsistence
kindled in my heart yearnings to help the poor which have continued to
this day and which have had a powerful influence on my whole life. A
last I may be going to see my longings to help the workless realised. I
think I am.

The commiseration then awakened by the misery of this class has been
an impelling force which has never ceased to make itself felt during
forty years of active service in the salvation of men. During this time I
am thankful that I have been able, by the good hand of God upon me,
to do something in mitigation of the miseries of this class, and to bring
not only heavenly hopes and earthly gladness to the hearts of
multitudes of these wretched crowds, but also many material blessings,
including such commonplace things as food, raiment, home, and work,
the parent of so many other temporal benefits. And thus many poor
creatures have proved Godliness to be "profitable unto all things,
having the promise of the life that now is as well as of that which is to
come."
These results have been mainly attained by spiritual means. I have
boldly asserted that whatever his peculiar character or circumstances
might be, if the prodigal would come home to his Heavenly Father, he
would find enough and to spare in the Father's house to supply all his
need both for this world and the next; and I have known thousands nay,
I can say tens of thousands, who have literally proved this to be true,
having, with little or no temporal assistance, come out of the darkest
depths of destitution, vice and crime, to be happy and honest citizens
and true sons and servants of God.
And yet all the way through my career I have keenly felt the remedial
measures usually enunciated in Christian programmes and ordinarily
employed by Christian philanthropy to be lamentably inadequate for
any effectual dealing with the despairing miseries of these outcast
classes. The rescued are appallingly few--a ghastly minority compared
with the multitudes who struggle and sink in the open-mouthed abyss.
Alike, therefore, my humanity and my Christianity, if I may speak of
them in any way as separate one from the other, have cried out for
some more comprehensive method of reaching and saving the perishing
crowds.
No doubt it is good for men to climb unaided out of the whirlpool on to
the rock of deliverance in the very presence of the temptations which
have hitherto mastered them, and to maintain a footing there with the
same billows of temptation washing over them. But, alas! with many
this seems to be literally impossible. That decisiveness of character,
that moral nerve which takes hold of the rope thrown for the rescue and

keeps its hold amidst all the resistances that have to be encountered, is
wanting. It is