was his reply.
The only concession he seems willing to make to the critics of the Salvation Army is in the matter of its hymns. He confesses that some of those hymns are crude and unlovely; but examine this confession and you find that it is only the language which causes him uneasiness. Approach him on the subject of dogma, the dogma crudely expressed but truthfully expressed in the worst of those hymns, and he is as hard as Bishop Gore or Father Knox.
He has been too busy, I think, to hear even a whisper from the field of modernism, though exaggerated rumours of what is taking place in that field must occasionally reach his ear and confirm him in his obscurantism.
Perhaps it is all to the good that he should be thus wholly uninterested in the speculations of the trained theologian. He has other work to do, and work of great importance, with few rivals and no helpers. By the machine which he controls so admirably, men and women all over the world, and usually in the darkest places of the world, are turned from living disastrous lives, lives which too often involve the suffering of children, and encouraged and braced up to lead lives of great beauty and an extreme of self-sacrifice.
He does well, I think, to stick with the unwavering and uncompromising tenacity of a fanatic to that centre of the Christian religion from which was derived in the first two centuries of its great history almost all impetus which enabled it to escape from Judaism and conquer the world. It is still true, and I suppose it will remain true to the end of time, that man born of a woman must be born again of the spirit if he is to pa.s.s from darkness into light. This, after all, is the whole thesis of Salvationism, and if General Booth wavered here the Army would be scattered to the winds. As for his definitions of light and darkness, at this stage of the world"s journey we need not be too nice in our acceptance of them.
But there remains the important question of Salvation Army methods.
It seems to me that here a change is desirable, not a radical change, for many of those methods are admirable enough, particularly those of which the public too seldom hears, but a change all the same, and one deep enough to create fresh sympathy for this devoted movement of evangelical Christianity.
I think it is time to stop praying and preaching at street corners, to mitigate the more brazen sounds of the Army band, and to discountenance all colloquialisms in Salvationist propaganda. I do not wish, G.o.d forbid, to make the Army respectable; I wish it to remain exactly where it is--but with a greater quietness and a deeper, more personal sympathy in its appeal to the sad and the sorrowful.
General Booth is not the man to make these changes, but his wife is a woman who might. In any case they will be made. Time will bring them about. Then it will be seen, I think, that the Salvation Army is one of the most powerful agencies in the world for spreading the good news of personal religion among the depressed millions of the human race. For even at this present time the lasting work of the Salvationist, the work which makes him so n.o.ble and so useful a figure in the modern world, is not accomplished by pageantry and tub-thumping, but by the intimate, often most beautiful, and very little known work of its slum officers, particularly the women.
Finally, concerning the General, he is in himself a telling witness to one of the mysterious powers of the Christian religion. For he is surely by temperament one of the most unstable of minds, and yet by the power of religion he has become a coherent personality of almost rigid singleness of purpose. In conversation with him one cannot help feeling that he is jumpy and excitable; every movement of his extremely mobile face suggests a soul of gutta-percha stretched in all directions by the movements of his brain, and twitching with every thought that crosses his mind; but at the same time one is aware in him of a power which is never deflected by a hair"s breadth from the path of a single purpose, and which holds him together with a strength that may be weakened but that can never be broken.
His supreme value for the student of religion is to be found in the explanation of this unifying power. In spite of intellectual shortcomings which might seem almost to exclude him from the serious attention of educated people, he stands out with a marked emphasis from the company of far abler men by reason of this power--this sense of unusual vigour and abnormal concentration of strength. And the explanation of this power, which unifies an otherwise incoherent personality, is to be found, I am quite confident, in his burning hatred of iniquity.
As a boy, like the poet Gray and the late Lord Salisbury, he suffered a good deal of bullying, and thus learned at school something beyond the reach of the Latin Grammar, namely, the brutality of human nature. He has never forgotten that discovery. Indeed, his after-life has widened and intensified that early lesson. Sin is brutality. It is selfishness seeking its low pleasure and its base delight in vilest self-indulgence involving the suffering of others, sometimes their profoundest degradation, even their absolute destruction. Particularly did he experience this burning conviction when he came to understand the well-nigh inconceivable brutality of s.e.xual vice. I believe that it was a poor harlot in the slums of London who first opened for him the door of fanaticism.
He had longed as a schoolboy to hit back at his tyrants, and now in the dawn of manhood that long repression made its weight felt in the blows he showered on the face of evil. For a year or two he was a wild man of evangelicalism, leading attacks on evil, challenging public attention, seeking imprisonment, courting martyrdom. It was from the flaming indignation of his soul that Mr. Stead took fire, and led a crusade against impurity which shocked the conscience of the eighties. But so deep and eternal was this hatred of evil, that General Booth soon came to see that he must express it in some manner which would outlive the heady moments of a "lightning campaign." He settled down to express that profound abhorrence of iniquity in terms of organisation. Tares might be torn suddenly from the human heart, but not the root of evil. If he could not kill the devil, at least he could circ.u.mvent him.
Such intense hatred of evil as still consumes his being is not popular in these days, and may perhaps be regarded as irrational. But we should do well to remind ourselves that while those who regard evil merely as a vestigial memory of human evolution do little or nothing to check its ravages, men like General Booth, and the men and women inspired by his abhorrence, save every year from physical and moral destruction thousands of unhappy people who become at once the apostles of an extreme goodness.
Such evidences of mediocrity as exist in the Salvationist are purely intellectual; morally and spiritually he is in the advance guard of the human race.
DR. W.E. ORCHARD
ORCHARD, Rev. WILLIAM EDWIN, Minister of the King"s Weigh House Church, Duke Street, W., since 1914; b. 20 Nov., 1887; e.s. of John Orchard, Rugby; m. 1904, Anna Maria (d. 1920), widow of Rev. Ellis Hewitt of Aldershot. Educ.: Board School; private tuition; Westminster College, Cambridge. Ordained, Enfield, 1904, B.D., London, 1905; D.D., London, 1909.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. W.E. ORCHARD]
CHAPTER IX
DR. W.E. ORCHARD
_O, you poor creatures in the large cities of wide-world politics, you young, gifted, ambition-tormented men, who consider it your duty to give your opinion on everything that occurs; who, by thus raising dust and noise, mistake yourselves for the chariot of history; who, being always on the look-out for an opportunity to put in a word or two, lose all true productiveness. However desirous you may be of doing great deeds, the profound silence of pregnancy never comes to you. The event of the day sweeps you along like chaff, while you fancy that you are chasing it_.--NIETZSCHE.
Until quite the other day I looked upon Dr. Orchard as a person unique in his generation. But I am now told by an authority in the nonconformist world that there are "two others of him"--one, I think, in Birmingham, the second in Clapham.
I am still permitted to think, however, that to Dr. Orchard belongs the distinction of being the first person of this erratic trinity, and therefore we may still regard him with that measure of curiosity which is the tribute paid by simple people to the eccentric and the abnormal.
But let me warn the reader against expectations of an original genius.
Dr. Orchard does not create; he copies. His innovations are all made after visits to the lumber-room. It is by going back such a long distance into the past that he startles, and by coming round full circle that he appears to surprise the future.
But where originality is rare, eccentricity must not be discounted.
Dr. Orchard is a ritualist in the midst of nonconformity; the first Free Churchman, I believe, to entertain exalted ceremonial aspirations, and to kneel for his orders at the feet of an orthodox bishop. One might almost hazard the conjecture that he remains in the Congregationalist Communion, as so many Anglo-Catholics remain in the Establishment, solely to supply the fermentation of an idea which will shatter its present const.i.tution. One thinks of him as a repentant Cromwell restoring "that bauble" to its accustomed place on the table of tradition.
In his heart of hearts he would appear to be a fervent inst.i.tutionalist, a lover of ceremonial, and a convinced sacerdotalist. To hear him use the word Catholic is to make one understand how the Church of Rome dazzles certain eyes, and to hear him claim that he is in the apostolical succession is to make one realise afresh how broad is the way of credulity.
One may understand his dislike of the hideous and pretentious architecture which disgraces non-conformity, and sympathise with his desire for more beautiful services in nonconformist chapels; but it is not so easy, while he remains a nonconformist, to understand, or to feel any considerable degree of sympathy with, his tendency towards practices which are the very ant.i.thesis of the nonconformist tradition.
All the same he is a person of whom we should do well to take at least a pa.s.sing notice, for he witnesses, however extravagantly, to a movement in the Free Churches which is not likely to lose momentum with the next few years--a movement not only away from sectarian isolation but towards the idea of one catholic and apostolic Church. There is certainly unrest in the Free Churches, and Dr. Orchard is a straw which helps us to understand if not the permanent direction of the wind, at least the fact that there is a breeze blowing in the fields of religious freedom.
Not long ago I asked one of the greatest figures in the Anglican Church what he thought of Dr. Orchard. He replied by raising his eyebrows and exclaiming rather disdainfully: "A ritualistic Dissenter! What is it possible to think of him?" I said that he attracted a good many people to his services in the King"s Weigh House Church, and that I had heard Mrs. Asquith was sometimes a member of his congregation. "_That_,"
answered the dignitary, "would not make me think any higher of Dr.
Orchard."
For many people, it must be confessed, he is a slightly ludicrous figure. He presents the spectacle of a sparrow stretching its wings and opening its beak to imitate the eagle of catholic lecterns. And he has a singularly nettling manner with some people which must add, I should think, to this unpopularity. He seems sweepingly satisfied with himself and his opinions, which are mostly of a challenging nature. He does not discuss but attempts to browbeat. His voice is an argument, and the expression on his face and the fire in his eyes suggest the street corner. He would have greatly distressed a man like Matthew Arnold, for the only method against such didactics is to send for the boxing gloves.
All the same he is a man of no little force, perhaps a scattered and dispersed force, as I am inclined to think; and he is a fighter whose blows, if not a teacher whose opinions, are more worthy of attention than his sacerdotal pretensions might lead one to suppose.
In appearance he may be compared with Dr. Clifford, but Dr. Clifford reduced to youthfulness and multiplied by an infinite c.o.c.ksureness; a small, eager, sandy-haired, clean-shaven, boyish-looking man, with light-coloured eyes behind shining spectacles, the head craning forward, the body elastic and restless with inexhaustible energy, the whole of him--body, mind, and spirit--tremulous with a jerkiness of being which seems to have no effect whatever on his powers of endurance.
One misses in him all feeling, all tone, of mellowness. His mind, at present, shows no lightest, trace of the hallowing marks of time; it suggests rather the very architecture he takes so savage a pleasure in denouncing--a kind of mock Gothic mind, an Early Doulton personality.
He has a thin voice, rather husky, and a recent accent.
In his most vigorous moments, when he is bubbling over with epigrams and paradoxes, ridiculing the dull people who do not agree with him, and laughing to scorn those who think they can maintain the Christian spirit outside the mysterious traditions of the Catholic Church, or when he is describing a recent church as a Blancmange Cathedral, and paraphrasing an account, given I think by Mr. James Douglas, of the building of a certain tabernacle in London--first it started out to be a Jam Factory, then a happy idea occurred to the builder that he should turn it into a Waterworks, then the foreman suggested that it would make an ideal swimming-bath, but finally the architect came on the scene and said, "Here, half a minute; there"s an alteration wanted here; we"re going to make it into a church"--at such moments, Dr. Orchard might be likened to a duo-decimo Chesterton--but a Chesterton of nonconformity. For he is a little crude, a little recent; a mind without mellowness, a spirit without beauty, a soul which feeds upon aggression.
He makes an amusing figure with a black cloak wrapped round his little body in Byronic folds, and a soft hat of black plush on his head, a Vesta Tilley quickness informing both his movements and his speech, as he nips forward in conversation with a friend, the arms, invisible beneath their cloak, pressed down in front of him, his body leaning forward, his peering eyes dancing behind their spectacles.
Nevertheless, those who most find him only amusing or worse still thoroughly dislikeable, who are antipathetic to the whole man, and who thus cannot come at the secret of his influence, must confess that there is nothing about him either of the smooth and oily or of the adroit and compromising. He is the last man on earth to be called an opportunist.
This is in his favour. His aggressiveness must put all but the toughest against him. He is tremendously in earnest. It would be difficult I think to exceed his sincerity.
But not to mind whose toes one may tread on is hardly in the style of St. Francis; and, after all, it is possible to be tremendously earnest about wrong things, and consumingly sincere in matters which are not perhaps definitely certain to advance the higher life of the human race.
Humility is always safest; indeed, it is essential to all earnestness and sincerity, if those energies are not to repel as many as they attract.
Dr. Orchard"s manner, which can be extraordinarily nettling in conversation, as I have suggested, is evidently of a very soothing character in the confessional--if that is the proper term. He has a remarkable following among women, and it is said that "if he put a bra.s.s plate on his door and charged five guineas a time" he might be one of the richest mind-doctors in London. He himself declares that his real work is almost entirely personal. I have heard him speak with some contempt of preaching, quoting the witticism of a friend that "Anglican preaching is much worse than it really need be," or words to that effect. He likes ceremonial and private confidence. He has the instincts of a priest.
His patients appear to be the wreckage of psychoa.n.a.lysis. It is said that "half the neurotics of London" consult him about their souls. I have no idea of the manner in which he treats these unhappy people, but I am perfectly sure that he gives them counsel of a healthy nature.
There is nothing about him which suggests unwholesomeness, and much that suggests sound strength and clean good sense. Also among his penitents are numerous shopgirls who have lost in the commercial struggle whatever piety they possessed in childhood and in their craving for excitement have gone astray from the path of safe simplicity--gambling on horse races and often getting into serious trouble by their losses. Dr.
Orchard may be trusted to give these weak, rather than erring daughters of London, advice which would commend itself to the Free Church Council, for with all his sacerdotal aberrations the basis of his moral life is rooted in Puritanism.
It is an entirely good thing that there should be a minister of religion in London who attracts people of this order, particularly a minister whose moral notions are so eminently sane and so steadily uncompromising. London is stronger and less disreputable for Dr.
Orchard"s presence in its midst--no doubt a very vulgar, degrading, and trivial midst, but all the same a great congestion of little people, one where the solemn note of the old morality sounds all too seldom across the tinkle of bells in the caps of so many fools.
This moral influence, however, may appear questionable in the eyes of strong-minded and unsentimental people. Would he exercise such personal power, it may be asked, if he were not regarded as a "novelty," if the eccentricity of his position in the nonconformist world had not so skilfully advertised him to a light and foolish generation ever ready to run after what is new? Of an Anglican clergyman"s popularity I have heard it said, "Who could not fill a church with the help of the band of the Grenadier Guards?"