The War Romance of the Salvation Army | Page 6

us with the problems of the
poor and the wicked.

While the Salvationist is not of the generally understood ascetic or
monastic type, yet his spirit and deeds are of the very essence of
saintliness.
As man has arrested the lazy cloud sleeping on the brow of the hill, and
has brought it down to enlighten our darkness, to carry our mail-bags,
to haul our luggage, and to flash our messages, so, I would say with all
reverence, that the Salvation Army in a very particular way has again
brought down Jesus Christ from the high, high thrones, golden
pathways, and wing-spread angels of Glory, to the common mud walks
of earth, and has presented Him again in the flesh to a storm-torn world,
touching and healing the wounds, the bruises, and the bleeding sores of
humanity.
That was a wonderful sermon Christ preached on the Mount, but was it
more wonderful than the ministry of the wounded man fallen by the
roadside, or the drying of the tears from the pale, worn face of the
widow of Nain? Or more wonderful than when He said, Let them
come--let them come--mothers and the little children--and blessed
them?
It has only been this same Christ, this Christ in deeds, when our women
have washed the blood from the faces of the wounded, and taken the
caked mud from their feet; when under fire, through the hours of the
night, they have made the doughnuts; when instead of sleeping they
have written the letters home to soldiers' loved ones, when they have
lifted the heavy pails of water and struggled with them over the
shell-wrecked roads that the dying soldiers might drink; when they
have sewn the torn uniforms; when they have strewn with the first
spring flowers the graves of those who died for liberty. Only Christ in
deeds when our men went unarmed into the horrors of the Argonne
Forest to gather the dying boys in their arms and to comfort them with
love, humam and divine.
That valiant champion of justice and truth; that faithful, able and
brilliant defender of American standards, the late Honorable Theodore
Roosevelt, told me personally a few days before he went into the
hospital that his son wrote him of how our officer, fifty-three years of
age, despite his orders, went unarmed over the top, in the whirl-wind of
the charge, amidst the shriek of shell and tear of shrapnel, and picked
up the American boy left for dead in No Man's Land, carrying him on

hie back over the shell-torn fields to safety.
It is this Christ in deeds that has made the doughnut to take the place of
the "cup of cold water" given in His name. It is this Christ in deeds that
has brought from our humble ranks the modern Florence Nightingales
and taken to the gory horrors of the battlefields the white, uplifting
influences of pure womanhood. It is this Christ in deeds that made Sir
Arthur Stanley say, when thanking our General for $10,000 donated for
more ambulances: "I thank you for the money, but much more for the
men; they are quite the best in our service."
It is this Christ who has given to our humblest service a
sheen-something of a glory-which the troops have caught, and which
will make these simple deeds to hold tenaciously to history, and to
outlive the effacing fingers of time-even to defy the very dissolution of
death.
As Premier Clemenceau said: "We must love. We must believe. This is
the secret of life. If we fail to learn this lesson, we exist without living:
we die in ignorance of the reality of life."
A senator, after several months spent in France, stated: "It is my
opinion that the secret of the success of this organization is their
complete abandonment to their cause, the service of the man."
Of the many beautiful tributes paid to us by a most gracious public, and
by the noblest-hearted and most kindly and gallant army that ever stood
up in uniform, perhaps the most correct is this: Complete abandonment
to the service of the man.
This, in large measure, is the cause of our success all over the world.
When you come to think of it, the Salvation Army is a remarkable
arrangement. It is remarkable in its construction. It is a great empire.
An empire geographically unlike any other. It is an empire without a
frontier. It is an empire made up of geographical fragments, parted
from each other by vast stretches of railroad and immense sweeps of
sea. It is an empire composed of a tangle of races, tongues, and colors,
of types of civilization and enlightened barbarism such as never before
in all human history gathered together under one flag.
It is an army,