Beneath Two Flags; A Study in Mercy and Help Methods (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. "NEW TIMES DEMAND NEW MEASURES AND NEW MEN." " The men who persecute you would have persecuted the Apostles," said the late John Bright, when the General and Mrs. Booth were attacked by a mob in Sheffield; and he might have added the reason why, which is, that those who suffered the persecution dared to get out of the ruts, and to adopt any measures that accomplished the desired end. The statement was made in the previous chapter that the change in individual life produced by conversion is twofold?the abolition of the old and the assumption of the new. It is the latter chiefly that arouses opposition. It does not so much matter when one lays aside old habits or practices; suppose, for example, that you are the most exact and punctilious of churchmen; you may gradually drop attendance at special services, or cease to be a Sunday-school teacher, or in any other way begin to leave undone the things that you used to do, and your action, while it may call up remonstrances, will excite among your friends neither controversy nor astonishment. Your withdrawal is inconvenient, perhaps, but not at all blameworthy. But let it once be made known that you are taking up a new line of work (and it must be remembered that we are dealing only with matters of religion), and you at once find yourself in a nest of objectors. Every fresh outbreak of enthusiasm, every fresh evidence of interest is regarded as dangerous, and is the signal forsuch a letting loose of tongues as calls for the exercise of much persistence and firmness of will. Emerson says, in his essay on Heroism, that no sight ever pleased him more than that of a young girl refusing the path that others had marked out for her, and boldly asserting her God-given freedom of action in what concerned herself most ne...