A GREAT OLD MAN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3577, 17 July 1912, Page 8

A GREAT OLD MAN.

GENERAL BOOTH AT 84,

Mr Harold Begbie had a fine character sketch of General Booth in the Daily Chronicle the other day. His final question to the veteran founder . of tlie Salvation Army and its answer are interesting. “Do you feel, speaking generally, that the world is better or worse than when you began life? Are you pessimist or optimist in your eighty-fourth \-oar ?” Mr Begbie asked. • “Everywhere,” the General replied, “I find the complaint that the crowd is turning away from tho churches. ,i One of the most striking symptom S-s of the age is indifference to religion as religion, especially when that religion takes an organised form and finds its expression in ritual ceremonies, and forma! worship alone, “I AM DISTRESSED.*’ “1 am not now blaming the churches. I am not a judge of ecclesiastical systems or their methods, but I have an impression that, tlie mass cf the people are discovering that there is a great gulf fixed between the .profession of love—love which is tlie core of religion—and the practice in daily life of those activities and self-sa' rifle es which will ever spring out of love where it exists. Religion has only too widely become a matter of form instead cf a living, breathing, active principle—a withered husk, a dead shell —and tlie man in the street has thrown it away. “Am I a pesimist?” you ask. Well, the outlook is not promising. I might even say it is melancholy. When I think of it all lam distressed- The one hope for the future of the world is a people whose religion has become their very life’s blood, and their one constraining, force. This world needs salvation —salvation in high places and low ones, in cur aristocracy, in our politicians, in our secular newspapers, as well as in the blackest, ugliest, and most devilish sections of the eummunitv.” THE CRY OF A SOUL. “Thus in his eighty-fourth year this old, wise, hard-fighting, and most tender-hearted man sees the world,” says Mr Begbie. “Looking on man’s indifference to religion, and religion’s indifference to the central and pivotal reality cf Christ’s revelation —the miracle -of the cleansed heart—the old General’s dim eyes grow sad, his voice becomes heavy and he utters the cry of a soul that has found truth, and knows how deep and pervasive is the satisfaction cf union with Gcd: T am distressed.” “Let Ike world take that cry of this old man to its heart.”