THE SALVATION ARMY.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 11, 1 August 1884, Page 7

THE SALVATION ARMY.

Moncure D. Conway writes to the ' San Francisco Chronicle' : —" The Salvation Army appeared to have found a particularly congenial soil in Australia. Howe, the famous bushranger, used to read the Scriptures regularly to his robber gang and swear them in on the prayer-book. One need only refer to the Australian ' War Cry' for evidence of the extent to which the army is recruited from the criminal classes. In this democratic country a notable sign of conversion to the army is a sottish egotism displayed in those whose cases must call for humility and penitence. At one of their frantic meetings a ' sister' declared : ' Once I was a vile wretch, not fit for hell; but now my elder brother the Lord Jesus, has taken me in hand, and I feel too good for Heaven.' Another ' sister ' remarked that she had ' knocked about with no one but the Lord Jesus Christ.' There is a true larrikin ring about such expressions as these, and they can hardly fail to diffuse among the converts an impression that immorality, or even crime, is a light thing, easily washed away by the ' blood,' and quite compatible with swift promotion to sainthood and paradise."