MEN OF GOD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 766, 26 March 1954, Page 20

MEN OF GOD

OHN WESLEY, founder of Methodism, and William Booth, founder and first General of the Salvation Army, both met with violent oppdosition during their early religious crusades. Wesley’s Journal tells of the dangers he faced — for the rough treatment the early Methodists received included imprisonment; and General Booth’s early campaigns were opposed by a "Skeleton army" organised to break them up, and for many years his followers were fined and imprisoned as breakers of the peace.

| Last year the BBC broadcast feature programmes about Wesley and Booth. The World My Parish, a radio portrait of Wesley, was one of several programmes broadcast to mark the 250th anniversary of |Wesley’s birth. John Wesley narrowly escaped being burned to death when he was six years old, and he grew. up to believe that God had rescued him for "some great work. At 22 he became an Anglican minister, and it was not till he was nearly 35 that he experienced the change that made him the leader of the Methodist Revival and the founder of world Methodism. The World My Parish is a portrait of a man, not of the movement. All the words spoken by the named characters are their own, taken from their letters and their diaries, and though the incidents seem improbable they really happened. The programme. brings out the strangely contrasting sides of Wesley’s character — credulous in some ways, severely logical in others; a mystic with

a most practical turn of mind; lavish in the time he gave to prayer but otherwise anxious never to waste a moment; a shrewd judge of men who mismanaged his. own love affairs. William Booth, the son of a speculative builder, was apprenticed to a pawnbroker. "Converted" at'15, he became a revivalist preacher, and, at 23, a regular preacher of the Methodist New Con: nection. Nine years later he broke away from the Connection and became an independent revivalist. Along with Booth’s strong, simple belief that eternal punishment was the fate of the unconverted went a profound pity for the outcast and a hatred of dirt; squalor and suffering. He believed that the. outcast could be restored to society if he could be made to feel that a decent- member of society cared about him, William Booth tells the story of the founder of the Salvation Army from 1865, when the young Methodist minister. dedicated "his? life and the lives of

his wife and children to work among the poorest of the poor, to the day in 1912 when, with the Salvation Army fighting its battle against sin in all parts of the world, crowds gathered outside International Headquarters in London to read the single line that announced the General’s death: "The General has laid down his sword. God is with us." The World My Parish, which was heard from 4YC this week, and William Booth, which will be heard from 3YA at 9.55 p.m. on Sunday, April 4, are now going the rounds of National Stations. William Booth is also included in a series of BBC programmes being broadcast from Commercial stations at 3.0 p.m. on Sundays.