A SALVATION ARMY NEWSPAPER.

Temuka Leader, Issue 804, 22 December 1881, Page 2

A SALVATION ARMY NEWSPAPER.

The. Saturday Review thus refers to the organ of a religious sect who call themselves xbe Salvation Armj . _ The War £rv, lies before US. and tn all religious literature we have seen nothing more painfully grotesque and unconsciirreverent. The vagaries of bagge?

preachers, the extravagai.--.-s m Nmger scored melodists, the ex‘m'■ agm'.- es of He old Puritans when most hop--l-ssiy deprived of the sense cf humor, arc all easily outdone by the performances of The ar Cry. There must he something w rong m a reTgioim movement which prefers to speak of the Third Heaven in hotel styl”, as “ Number Three. ” One of the mosi moving contributions to The War Cry is the, spiritual auto-biography of Major Taylor. The gallant major says he spent much precious time in the service of the Devil. His father once told him to abut a gate, on a dusky evening, and he hid in a hedge “ as long as il would take to get >o the gate and back,” and announced the gate “was all right.’’ Tim Major’s father divo'ered and punished this little bit of work done in the service of the Devil. Once he drenched Ids coat ill :i pond, and then came home and said that it had been too wet for him to go t<school. At the age of sixteen he became a draper’s appiertice, and “ began to work for Jesus.” Sicce he joined the Salvation Army he has been much exercised as to the propriety of going to distant ‘‘kpt-e-dii I' 5 huc! SulviitioG reviews bv railway on Sunday. But he ha> come to the cmc usion that it is definitely wrong, and now lie ills quite lt sanctified and made whole.” After being - drilled tu Whitechapel for three months.” he was shunted to Midlesbro’. “There he lost a lot of sermonizing ideas, and got into the Hallelujah style, which I soon saw clearly to be the best for our job.” Captain Pearson writes in a bulletin :--“Talk about sharp-shooting, 160 in one hour; are not ICO short good testimonies hotter than two hours’ bad preaching 1” Certainly nothing can be worse than t.vo hours had preaching. And yet there cannot he much coherent argument in testimonies delivered ;-t the rate of two an 1 n fraction per minute. This i> the style of thing, however which suits “a regular Haklujah man.’ From another remark of Major Tavlor’s we learn that the peaceful public realty has one very palpable grievance against the Salvation Army. “It was at Bolton that a woman, enraged with our proceedings, exclaimed. ‘ Cmumg here on night with your row, waken ng up the bairns after tin y had gone to sleep.

There can be no doubß we fear, that die Salvation .Army are noisy, not to say rowdy evangelists. To make a noise, thou, to get up ‘Salvation free and eases” and t; Hosanna tea fights,” is, perhaps, sagacious strategy’. But. if these tactie< lead to a regular fight- the Salvation leaders have scarcely reason to complain